Grail: a novel of resurrection
by Minisinoo
Summary: At Alkali Lake, Jean Grey gave her life to save her fellows. But if so, what's risen from the water? A little bit ghost story, a little bit mystery, a little bit suspense. Occurs after X-Men 2, does not assume X-Men 3. This is my own Dark Phoenix Saga; semi-sequel to SPECIAL, with X-Men 1 and 2 in between.
1. Preface

**_Grail: a novel of resurrection_** was begun shortly after _X-Men 2_ came out, in June of 2004, and completed in 2006, a little before _X-Men 3_ arrived in theatres. While not originally intended as a "replacement" for _X-Men 3_, merely an alternative, I was so disappointed in the third film that this one became my mental version of what really happened.

_Grail_ belongs to the same continuity as **_Special: the genesis of Cyclops_**, and so Scott's comics background (with a dark twist) is used, rather than the background in _An Accidental Interception of Fate_. It can be loosely regarded as a "sequel" to _Special_, with the two films (and a few short stories) in between.

_Grail_ pulls on a number of elements from the original comics, including the Dark Phoenix Saga (as did _X-Men 3_), but also the Hellfire Club and the Legacy theme. Several popular figures from the comics appear, mutated into a their "movieverse" versions.

But _Grail_ also pulls on mythological themes, "The Matter of Britain" and "The Fisher King," hence the title (see endnotes for further explanations).

This is an exceptionally long piece, even for me, clocking in at 221,000 words, but as it weaves together 2 intersecting plots, both complex, perhaps the length is to be expected to do it all proper justice. As with all my X-men novels, _Grail_ is intended for an adult audience.

_Grail_ was the last novel I penned for X-men.

**A FEW BASICS (posted with/before all X-Men novels):**

In my X-Men fiction, I created TWO basic "worlds," each of which shares a common continuity. I re-use these because it's convenient, but that means things can get a bit confusing if one launches into the novels indiscriminately.

The _**chief difference**_ between my two worlds involve radically different origins for Cyclops (Scott Summers). Essentially, these two worlds are "movie world" and "comic-based movie world." Or, _**Scott is not an orphan**_ vs. _**Scott is an orphan**_. Each does have a "preliminary" or "prequel" novel that explains how the X-Men came to be in that particular "world."

In the first category (non-orphan), the history of Scott is based (loosely) on the history given in the novelization of the FIRST X-Men movie, or _X-Men I_ (dir. Bryan Singer, please don't confuse it with the recent _X-Men: First Class_). _X-Men I_ came out in 2000. The second category is much more heavily based on the comics themselves, and utilizes his official comics history as an orphan.

_**Novels/short stories that utilize the NON-ORPHAN background:**_  
_An Accidental Interception of Fate_ (prequel)  
_Climb the Wind_ (set after X1)  
[_Heyoka_ & _Children of the Middle Waters_ (not available on FF-net)]  
(story series) "Man Behind Red Shades" & "Micky Blue Eyes"  
(short stories) "Letters and Papers from Prison," "Mutant Darwin Awards," "Sleepy Dragon," "101(and not Dalmatians)," "Bitch," "Idle Musings of a Woman at Eighty," "Broken," & "Agonia."

_**Novels/short stories that utilize the comics-based ORPHAN background:**_  
_Special: the genesis of Cyclops_ (prequel)  
_Grail: a novel of resurrection_ (set after X2)  
(Short stories) "Five Pounds," & "Anahinga,"  
(Crossovers) "Case X-1743: Unresolved" (X-Files) & "The Room With a Computer" (Harry Potter)

In terms of sheer wordcount, I probably produced more work for X-Men than any other fandom, especially if one also counts the purely comics-based stories (or "comicverse" vs. "movieverse").


	2. Prologue: Lady of the Lake

There is ever, only one phoenix.

She's barren except in death, and she dies in excruciating agony, her flamelike plumage consumed by fire. Then and only then is she reborn from the ashes of herself - without mother or father, without kith or kin, without mate. She is alone. Death and life and death - she is the release of the spirit from earth's bondage, and she rises in glory. Percival's purity, guardian of the Grail, herald of the New Age. Her blood burns, her tears heal, yet she's always solitary in her splendor.

Resurrection isn't all it's cracked up to be.

* * *

Shivers of awareness flicker across her consciousness, and a filter of light streams in sheets of gold, scintillating but fuzzy, like the skin on a peach.

* * *

"You paid a _drachma_ for a peach?"

"What's wrong with that? It's what? Fifty cents?"

She held up her fruit to show it off, perfect and golden, not a bruise or mar. "I saw it and couldn't resist." They stood beyond a market near the docks of Kavalla, where fishing boats of various sizes had been tied up at harbor. The boats were painted blue and white and red, looking small and old and sea-battered next to the one great cruise ship that sat off shore. Now and then, the ship's horn could be heard all through the town. On the horizon to the north, east, and west were pine-covered mountains enclosing this ancient town on the _Via Egnatia_ - the Roman road that had led from Italy through Greece into Constantinople . . . Istanbul, these days, but the Greeks refused to call it that. There was a sign not far from where they stood that read: _Constantinople_, followed by some number of kilometers. Scott had thought it funny, and had taken a picture while Warren had rattled off night spots and good restaurants to be found in Istanbul, and Hank had launched into an explanation of how 'Istanbul' was probably a corruption of the Greek phrase, "_eis ten polein_" (meaning "to the City"). "'The City' was never Athens," he'd concluded.

Jean had rolled her eyes at all of them. Never go sightseeing with men, she'd said.

They'd split up not long after, Hank and Warren heading for the old Norman fort on the acropolis above, and Scott and Jean meandering through the lower town, buying bread and cheese for lunch. And a peach.

"I'll share," Jean said now, and took a bite, then held out the peach to him, bright and enticing in the Greek sun. Not quite Atalanta's apple.

Gripping her hand, he pulled it closer, but not to bite into peach flesh. Instead, his mouth came down on her soft wrist, licking a trail of juice that had slid over her skin.

She sucked in breath, nearly choking on her bite, and he smiled while slapping her back. "You okay?" he asked. Butter wouldn't have melted in his mouth.

"Bastard," she said when she could speak, tears sliding down her cheeks from her coughing fit. She wiped them away with her free hand, so she didn't have to look at him.

"You offered to share."

She looked up. He was watching her, wearing that sardonic smile he had down to an art, but there was something else behind it, rising like Olympus in the distance across the Thermiac gulf, half shrouded in cloud. Daring, testing, she held up the peach again, level with his mouth.

Bending forward, he bit into it.

* * *

The water rocks her, tremulous, caressing. There is a song somewhere in the voices of fishes.

* * *

_Hush little baby, don't say a word,  
Mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird,  
and if that mockingbird don't sing,  
Mama's gonna buy you a diamond ring,  
and if that diamond ring turns to glass,  
Mama's gonna buy you a looking glass,  
and if that looking glass gets broke ..._

* * *

Thousands of tons of water had shattered her. It had happened instantly, every bone in her body broken, her ribcage and pelvis and skull smashed like glass goblets, flattening her internal organs, puncturing and collapsing her lungs, and crushing her brain. Forget drowning. What had remained of Jean Grey had been human pulp, torn by the force of the water.

It had been too fast for more than an instant of pain, but that had been a horrible, piercing agony like nothing she'd imagined could exist, far worse than the racking pain she'd shared with Annie at her moment of death, oh so long ago.

* * *

_Don't die, don't die, don't die ..._

_Hurts ..._

_Don't die ..._

_Can't breathe anymore. Hurts ..._

_Don't die ..._

_Too tired, Jeannie. Hurts ..._

_Don't die. Please, don't die. Don't leave me all alone down here in this well._

Silence

_I can't find my way out, Annie! Don't leave me here!_

Silence

* * *

Being dead is a relief. She's been floating here in the water, like one of those translucent glass fish, barely visible, for she doesn't know how long. But the sun's so lovely, breaking apart through the water, and she loses herself in it. What meaning does time have, for the dead?

Divested of anything so cumbersome as a body, she rolls in the little lake waves, flitting about beneath the spring-cold water and awaiting the sun each morning. And each morning, it gets a little warmer, the light a little more green. All around her, life wakes from hibernation and reproduces itself. In her gossamer state, she reaches out to touch the infant flickers, brilliant, fleeting . . . beautiful like the sun. Life is beautiful because it will end. She understands that now. Who wants to live forever and taste joy grown cold on the tongue, enervated and senile? That isn't living. Better to die suddenly, burn richly, and end as ash.

* * *

"You're a pyro, Warren. What _is_ it about men and fire?"

"What do you mean?" He was playing with a lighter for no apparent reason beyond seeing the tiny burst of flame and hearing the click of the lid as he snuffed it out.

"Every guy I know has to play with fire. You. Hank and his Bunsen burners. The professor and the little fires in his suite fireplace. Scott running fingers through a candle flame. It's nuts."

Warren glanced up at that. "I think fire's fascinating - beautiful. But Scott's playing with fire for a whole different reason."

"And what reason's that?"

Warren looked back at the copper lighter in his hand, engraved with the Worthington crest. He snapped it shut. "Scott wants to get burned so he knows he's alive."

* * *

She's not alive. Or at least, she died - she knows that much. But why she's still hanging about here, she can't say. Shouldn't she have passed on somewhere else by now? Or was this the fate of all human spirits when they'd shuffled off their mortal coil, to flit about unseen but still anchored to this earth? Yet if so, where were the others? Surely she wasn't the only person to have died here in the hundreds of thousands of years of human existence? It's a puzzle.

She isn't sure just when rolling in the waves and following the lake creatures isn't enough, but she becomes fitful. The water is languid and cool, a pleasant place to rest, recover - and to forget. For instance, she had a name once, but she's not too sure now what it was. She had a physical body, as well, but it's gone, eaten away and rotted by water. The bones remain fetched up against submerged concrete, clothed still in bits of leather and metal fasteners. She doesn't go to that part of the lake. She can barely remember what her body even looked like.

But she remembers him. She remembers the awful surge of terror and desperation that had rolled off him when he'd realized what she was up to, and what it would cost. And she remembers telling him goodbye. Feelings are easier for her to revive than details and events; they lie closer to the heart. She'd made a choice, but what the choice was, or why, she couldn't say. She knew only that, for a few minutes, she'd felt impossibly _powerful_. And she'd felt powerful regret, too, because she was leaving him. Leaving them.

She missed them.

It grew slowly, the missing - like her discontent - and by the time the full warmth of summer had hit the valley and her lake, the missing had become a fire that couldn't survive drowning any longer. She had to return, and she began to circle the place where she'd been standing when she'd died, rarely venturing far from the spot. She was gravid with something she couldn't quite diagnose.

Once, a stray camper told the locals in the Alkali Lake Store that he'd seen a red glow, like will-o'-the-wisps or fox lights, some way out in the lake, reflecting beneath the water. The surface there had seemed to boil. The owner told him he must have seen a big fish and phosphorescence. It had, the camper said, been mighty bright for phosphorescence. A few days later, a hiker said he'd seen a woman walking on the water. Laughing, the store owner had suggested mermaids, and the man had departed, disgruntled. There were more reports, as summer ground on, and the white locals took to calling the phenomenon the Lady of the Lake, while the Esketemc Nation said someone must have died there, and they left offerings of tobacco ties on the cedars around the new shore's edge, and little carvings of birds, hoping her spirit would get the message and fly away.

In a manner of speaking, her spirit did. On June twenty-third, the Lady of the Lake rose fully from the waters, exactly thirty-four years from the day she'd emerged from her mother's womb. She drew up the mists around herself in a swirling, pulsing robe, lit red from within, and then she walked across the water to the shore, setting one ephemeral foot on summer grass.

Mnemosyne sought to remember.

* * *

_**Notes:**_ _The Lady of the Lake is often believed to be the Celtic water goddess Coventina, whom the Romans equated with Mnemosyne, or Memory, the mother of the Muses. There is, in fact, a little native reserve called the Alkali Lake Band, in British Columbia. Amusingly, one can read about the Esketemc via the 'Phoenix' engine._


	3. Personal Journal: Devastation

_**From Scott Summers' Personal Journal:**_

Ideologues are never detail men.

When William Stryker tricked Charles Xavier into assaulting the world's mutant population telepathically, he gave no thought to the consequences to _non_-mutants. Likewise, when Erik Lehnsherr reversed the process, targeting non-mutants, he didn't stop to think about consequences, either. As a result, an estimated 11 million are dead worldwide, over 70% of those in industrialized countries. And that doesn't count the maimed and wounded.

Cars, trucks, and buses collided on highways, interstates and autobahns. Some pileups were so massive, it took days, not hours, to clean them up, with fatalities hitting triple digits. Planes fell out of the sky or crashed into runways, killing hundreds at once when their mutant or non-mutant pilots lost control. Heavy machinery chewed up life and limb. The injured and ill and elderly succumbed to heart attacks or strokes. Hospitals filled, and rescue workers and EMTs couldn't possibly get to everyone in a disaster of such magnitude.

No doubt Stryker or Lehnsherr would have called all that "collateral damage," anesthetizing human loss into meaninglessness.

Third-world countries fared best, and maybe it's time they got a break, but the simple fact is that falling on the ground for five minutes of encephalic agony when herding sheep or cattle is rather less catastrophic than seizing at the wheel going sixty miles an hour down Interstate 95. Chance had a great deal to do with who lived and who died.

So what's one more death in all of that? What's one more empty bed? Perhaps I should have felt solidarity in grief, but I just felt dwarfed in my loss.

On the upside, we could avoid explaining exactly what had happened to Jean. Police departments were overwhelmed, and they took my report that she was missing and had been on the road at the time, and added it to their pile. Meanwhile, we ran one of the mansion cars off the highway, through a guard-rail, and down a bank into the Hudson. I got a call three days later that her car had been found, but no body. They'd keep looking, however . . . .

I played along. I'm a pretty good actor when I have to be, and I was still in a state of shock that wasn't fake. The whole scenario wouldn't have held up under normal circumstances, but these days were anything but normal, and there were a lot of white crosses on highways. Even without the body, the case was shunted aside and regarded as closed, informally. They had too many cases, and no reason to suspect this one was anything but what it appeared to be. Certainly no one at the mansion was telling them to look at the bottom of a lake on the other side of Canada.

The most tangled aspect of the whole worldwide disaster involved who to blame. Almost every government was howling for blood, and while William Stryker made a conveniently dead scapegoat, there was still the matter of just who'd authorized Stryker in the first place? The U.S. and Canada both wound up on the block since Stryker had been U.S. military but his base had been Canadian. Many apologies were made, a number of Pentagon and White House functionaries lost their jobs, and at least one U.S. army general's career went down in flames.

It still wasn't enough. The U.S.'s world reputation sank further while Canada's barely stayed afloat, conspiracy theorists had a field day, people all over the world still suspected mutants, and President McKenna essentially gave up all chance at re-election.

I'll vote for him anyway. Why? Because he made the hard choice - he took it on the chin and prevented a mutant pogrom by concealing the damning truth. There are some things the public doesn't need to know. I guess that makes me an elitist, but my general experience has shown me that when they think they're threatened (whether or not they actually are), people shoot first and ask questions later. McKenna had a choice - rise to the occasion and be remembered as a great man in retrospect even if he sacrificed his political career now, or play the coward, try to save himself, and wind up with a lot of innocent blood on his hands. So far, he seems to be trying for the first option, which makes him a president worth having, in my books. Too bad most of the public can't know, and won't for a good long time if we're to avoid civil war.

In none of the trials, debates, or international media circuses has mention of the professor or the school - or Magneto - come up. It's known that Lehnsherr broke out of prison, but he hasn't been connected with the attacks, and Stryker's assault was explained as a "machine," intended to target mutants, that malfunctioned. Stryker's own paranoia has worked in our favor. Only a handful of trusted operatives knew what he was actually up to, and most of them died at Alkali Lake. The three who didn't have had their memories erased.

In fact, a number of people have had their memories tampered with, at least marginally. Anyone whose discretion isn't certain no longer knows enough about the school to be a threat - that includes parents and siblings, maintenance people, and even the UPS man. The professor may be an idealist, but he's a pragmatic idealist. After all, his school hides the base for a mutant strike force - not usual operating procedure for an ideologue. He's not Stryker, or Lehnsherr, and he pays attention to details and collateral damage. Soldiers may have attacked us once, but they damn well won't again, and whatever face he turns to the students, however reassuring he tries to be, they don't know how he sits in a dark office after the sun goes down, staring out the window at ghosts. He may know intellectually that he was forced to do what he did, but that doesn't change the fact that he_caused_ those millions and millions of deaths, worldwide. And he feels it. That's why I'm still here - because he feels it.

But I'm not talking to him unless I have to - because he didn't force Jean to get back on the plane.

Understand - it's not that I'd (romantically) rather be dead with her than alive without her, not if the cost would have been everyone else trapped there, including the kids. I'm not stupid, nor sadistic.

No, what makes me so mad I can't see straight is that she didn't_have_ to die. There were options. She ignored them, and Xavier let her.

If she could power the plane from outside, she could have fucking well done it from inside, too. If she could pick up several_tons_ of titanium and steel and hold it in the air until the engines cut in, then her own one-hundred-and-thirty-eight pounds wouldn't have made a spit of difference. If she could hold off a goddamn _tidal wave_, splitting it like Moses, then she could have managed to hold it for another few seconds while Wagner teleported her to safety. Xavier tells me all that's hindsight, that she made the best choice she could at the time, people don't think straight in a crisis, and I shouldn't let my grief take away her bravery.

But dammit,_I _thought of those things. The truth is that she locked me up in the plane like I was three instead of almost thirty and didn't let me command because she didn't _want_ to survive. That's the _choice_ she made. And I seem to be the only one who's willing to speak the truth.

Jean didn't 'sacrifice' herself.

She suicided.


	4. Guardian Angel

The private plane touched down at the Westchester County Airport outside White Plains a little after nine on a Saturday evening. It was raining and the runway lights fuzzed blue through the drizzle while the plane's own running lights blinked in white and red.

"Mr. Worthington, we'll have a car brought around for you."

"Thank you, Aaron."

Closing his laptop, Warren stowed it in his briefcase and waited. No sense in getting up yet. At six-foot-two, he was rarely able to straighten fully inside a cabin and it just made his back hurt worse. Now, he stared out the window and let his mind go numb. It was easier that way; he'd rather not think right now. About fifteen minutes later, his personal assistant was back. "The car's ready, sir."

Warren rose to follow Aaron Mayfield out of the plane. His driver already had the door open and the crew was stowing his luggage as rain came down relentlessly, streaking the glare of lights and the windows of the car. Hurrying inside, he tossed his briefcase on the seat opposite and let Aaron pour him (another) drink, which he took without comment and finished in the twenty minutes it took to drive to the dot on the map that was Salem Center.

As the car pulled up to the gate beside the sign, Warren rolled down his window and punched in the code himself. He didn't give it out to anyone, not even his driver or personal assistant. They knew the place was a school, and that he served on the Board of Regents (one of a grand total of five people), but that was all they needed to know. "How long will you be staying?" Mayfield asked now as the limo pulled around the drive's circle.

"As long as it takes," Warren replied.

"Sir -"

"You have my number, Aaron. I'll set up a mini-office in my suite. I'm not going incommunicado."

"Yes, sir." His assistant wasn't happy, but he also wasn't going to argue, which was why he still had his job. Warren didn't always like yes-men, but that's what he wanted in a personal assistant, and about the most Mayfield was good for, in Warren's estimation. That this was a condescending assessment didn't occur to him.

Now, he got out, briefcase in hand, and took one of his suitcases himself. There were three of them, plus the suit-bags and briefcase. His driver helped him get the rest up to the front porch.

_Welcome home, Warren,_ ghosted through his mind even before his finger hit the doorbell. _It should be open; I've been expecting you. _

_Of course,_ he replied with a faint smile.

_Your room is ready. _

_Thanks._

The door was, indeed, open, but Warren watched as the driver returned to the car, got in, and drove off. He kept watching until he saw the gate close behind it. Then he entered the house.

_Where is he?_

_Asleep. _

_Already? It's barely eight o'clock._

_Actually, this is the first time he's slept in over 48 hours. And the first time since that he's slept in their room. _

That wasn't good, even if it was predictable, and Warren wasn't about to wake him. Instead, he headed for the elevator even as Ororo came tearing out of the rec room. "Oh, my God!" she said, embracing him. He hugged her back. "Thank goodness you're here," she said in his ear.

"How is he?"

She shook her head as a few other students appeared, staring at him curiously. "You need some help?" she asked, eying his luggage with amusement. Ororo had always traveled light.

"Yeah, sure," he said, piling a smaller satchel and one of the suit-bags on the larger rolling suitcase, then grabbing his briefcase and heading for the elevator. Ro got the remaining pieces and followed. In the elevator, Warren tried again, "How is he?"

"Overworking himself."

Reaching the mansion's third floor, they headed down to the small suite that was unofficially Warren's, right next to Scott and Jean's - now just Scott's. Dragging the luggage inside, Warren dropped his briefcase on the desk, then skinned out of his suit jacket and the shirt beneath as quickly as he could manage. Ororo watched this impromptu strip with a slight upturn of her lips. "Get it off," he said, more of a plea than an order.

Coming over, she helped him with the wing harness, unfastening buckles and straps with a soft rasp of leather, then lifting it free. He just dropped face down on the bed, wings cascading out to either side in a fall of feathers. Slowly, he extended them, hearing the joints crack. He had to go slow. No more flicking them open after they'd been racked for almost twenty-four hours, and he wasn't sure if that was the effect of too many years in the harness - like Jean or his mother complaining of too many years in high-heels - or a product of age. He'd turned thirty a few months before. That wasn't so old, in the grand scheme of things, but he could no longer go for a day having the wings penned without suffering for it later.

"You're going to handicap yourself, if you keep this up," Ro told him, as if she were the telepath, not the weather witch.

He turned his face sideways so he could see her. "What choice do I have? Pretend to be Gabriel? No thanks."

She shook her head. "Do you need anything? Food?"

"Right now, what I need most is sleep." Well, what he needed most was to see Scott, but if Scott were sleeping, Warren would let him be.

"Okay," she said. "It is good to see you, you know."

"You, too. I'll join the living in the morning." Then he winced at his own phrasing, his wings snapping shut in reflex. "Shit," followed immediately by, "Ow."

Reaching out, she helped extend the wings again, just stroking along their arch for a moment, using fingers to massage the sensitive weave of muscle and tendons along the back until he shivered in pleasure. "Thanks," he said.

"You are most welcome." Then she left him to himself, shutting off the light and closing the door behind her. For a few moments, Warren debated getting up to finish undressing, then dismissed it. He let sleep take him, the great white wings sliding loosely over the edges of the bed to trail on the floor.

_Warren!_ invaded his dreams even as a distant-through-walls shout and the sound of crashing yanked him off the bed, wings arching instinctively. He was still mostly asleep, but already moving out through the little sitting room for the door to the suite, yanking it open. "What?" he said, though no one was in the third-floor hall beyond. He heard another shout on his left and a screech like something tearing; it came from Jean and Scott's suite - Scott's suite, now - even as Xavier said into his head, _Scott is having a nightmare, I believe. I'm getting dressed, but you can move faster._

Warren needed no other prompting, barreling around the corner and down the short hall to the suite door, to yank on the knob.

It was locked.

Had he paused for thought, he'd have realized that he had a keycard in his wallet, back in his own suite. He was the one person (besides Xavier) whom Scott and Jean would never lock out of their room. But he wasn't thinking, he was panicking. So he lifted his leg and, using the deceptive mutant strength that came with his wings, kicked the door in.

It crashed back against the wall and there was another yell from the general vicinity of the couch, and the sound of something falling as Warren flipped on a light.

The room looked like a cyclone had hit it - all but the couch Scott had, apparently, been sleeping on, but had fallen off of at Warren's entry. "What the hell?" he asked now, getting to his feet.

Then he noticed the state of the sitting room, and gaped right along with Warren. "Holy fuck."

Couches and chairs had been shoved about, a lamp had been knocked over, books had fallen off their cherrywood shelves, the Georgian mirror had fallen to floor, shattering, and the afghan that usually draped the back of the couch was now hanging from the Edwardian chandelier in the center, casting a blue-green-brown tint to the light.

"I take it you didn't do this," Warren said, walking over to Scott even as they could hear the patter of feet in the hall beyond.

"No," Scott said simply, turning as Ororo burst through the open door, followed by some of the kids.

"What is this?" Ro asked. "Scott - did you . . . ?"

"_No,_" Scott said again, walking to the old roll-top desk, which had been pulled half away from the wall. He shoved it back, then bent to right an antique seat beside it.

More students arrived, and finally Warren heard the whine of an approaching wheelchair. Kids parted to let Xavier through while Scott - somewhat aimlessly - tried to fix the mess, pulling the afghan off the chandelier and moving furniture. The crowd in the doorway watched - as if afraid to approach, or unsure what to make of the whole matter. "Poltergeists," one of the kids said, perhaps to break the tension.

"Or telekinetics," one of the other kids replied.

"The only telekinetic we had died in Canada," Scott snapped back and everyone flinched at his bluntness - even Warren, even Xavier.

But not a tall man who'd apparently just arrived. He had coarse hair, a lumberjack shirt, and smelled of sweat and tobacco. Warren wrinkled his nose as the fellow - who must be Logan - pushed past with just a glance and a raised eyebrow, then went about helping Scott clean up, tackling the mess from the mirror - and shaming Warren, who only belatedly realized that he should be doing that, not some interloping stranger. It was always in the small things that his upbringing showed itself. Servants cleaned up messes, not Worthingtons.

Turning instead to the crowd at the door, he raised his wings to cut off their view of the room and made shooing motions. "Out," he said. "Show's over. I'm sure all of you have classes in the morning." And even if half of them had no idea who he was, the practiced authority in his voice had them withdrawing to slink off.

"I had best follow," Ororo said, "to be sure the children all end up back in the rooms they are _supposed_ to."

Warren snorted at that and watched her play mother hen, herding them away, though he hadn't missed the troubled look in her eyes. Settling his wings and turning back to the room, he found just the four of them now - himself, Xavier, Scott, and the man called Logan, who asked neutrally, "What do they call this? Therapeutic rage or something?" He dumped glass from the mirror into a trash bin.

"Give it a rest," Scott replied, "I didn't trash my room."

Face incredulous, Logan turned where he was kneeling on the floor. "Then who the hell _did_?"

"I don't know, but it wasn't me."

"Now which of us has the memory problem -"

"_Fuck you! _Fuck you, you son of a bitch!" And Scott lunged at him. Warren was moving for Scott at the same time Logan rolled to the side, but Xavier's voice halted all of them.

"Stop!"

They stopped, Logan looking grateful, Scott looking sulky, and Warren - Warren suspected his own face just held an expression of bewilderment. None of this was adding up - well, outside of Scott's temper. Warren made his way over to his friend's side and shot Logan a warning glance that wasn't entirely friendly, but the other man simply stared back at him with cool detachment. Warren had met men like Logan before - aggressive, instinctual, rebellious - and wasn't impressed. He had no idea what Logan thought of him, and the professor was speaking in any case.

"Fighting among ourselves is pointless. Logan, Scott was asleep until just a few minutes ago. He was having a nightmare, in fact. I woke Warren -"

"- who broke down my fucking door," Scott interrupted.

"Sorry. It was locked."

"What happened to using the damn key?"

"Forgot I had it."

"Gentlemen," the professor said while Logan eyed both of them with a renewed interest. Xavier turned to Scott. "What did you see?"

"_Nothing." _Scott ran a hand into his bangs and pulled at them. He was still wearing his night strap on his glasses, which kept them from accidentally moving while he slept. "I was sound asleep until Warren crashed through my door. He turned on the light, and there was this . . . . " Scott gestured to the half-repaired wreckage. "I didn't even hear it happening. I don't know how it _did_ happen . . . . "

Scott's voice was rising just a little and Warren arched a wing enough for the feathers to brush his friend's back even as Logan said, "I don't know how you _could've_ slept through it. I heard it downstairs in the den."

Logan, Warren decided, didn't know when to keep his mouth shut. Scott was already turning, jaw clenched and head tilted in that way he had when prepared to fight, but Xavier intervened yet again. "Logan, enough. Scott is normally a very light sleeper, and you have exceptional hearing, in any case. There must be more to this matter than it would appear.

Finally rising, Logan dusted his hands. "Maybe one'a the kids's got TK and's been hiding it - decided to pull a little prank on Summers."

"Right _now_?" Warren asked, "That's a bit _crass_, don't you think?"

"Kids're kids."

"It is possible," Xavier said, "but I must agree with Warren. I do not believe that even our most jaded students would do something this cruel and thoughtless." His eyes had slid to Scott's face, which was turned down to glare at the hardwood floor. "But we should not rule out the possibility of a student manifesting a secondary power. While having a secondary mutation _is_ rather rare, it does occur, and dual mutations rarely manifest together. Usually one appears before the other. Tomorrow morning, I'll do some investigating in Cerebro."

"But if it's some kid," Logan asked, "why would she - or he - trash Summers' room?"

"It may be simple proximity. The most obvious place to begin our investigation is with the students in the rooms directly beneath this suite."

Scott was turning around in the middle of the floor, looking to see if everything was picked up, or as much of it as could be just now. "But why didn't I wake up?" he asked. "When it was Jean, I always woke up. Woke even before her, sometimes."

"I can't answer that," the professor said. "Perhaps, this time, you were simply too exhausted." Head jerking around, Scott glared while Warren flexed his wings again in a vain attempt at comfort. "It is not an insult, Scott," Xavier said.

Scott plopped down on the couch and stared forward at nothing - or rather, he stared at the empty wall where the mirror had been. "Jean picked that. I always hated it, but she liked it." The words were riddled with vague guilt and didn't immediately connect to anything that had been said before. "And the afghan," reaching over, he picked it up and passed it through his hands, "It's something her grandmother crocheted. I thought it made the place look like some retiree's living room."

Warren shot a glance at Logan - who was still standing there, listening, and who - Warren thought - really had no business being involved in the first place. He reached out to take the afghan from Scott and fold it neatly, draping it back over the couch. "We can clean up the rest in the morning," he said. "We should all go back to sleep."

Logan snorted. "Won't get no argument from me," and he headed for the door, pausing in the frame to look back at Warren, adding, "I'm Logan, by the way."

"Yes, I know," Warren replied, just the faintest edge of sourness in his tone, but a sharp glance from Xavier made him nod finally, and say, "I'm Warren Worthington. An old student."

"You knew Jean?"

"Yes, I knew Jean."

And it seemed so strange to put her in the past tense - it choked him, and he sat down abruptly beside Scott. Head lowered, Logan departed, but Xavier was still there. None of them said anything for a while, and Warren could feel the tension between Scott and Xavier. Finally, the professor said, "We shall find out what happened here tonight, Scott."

"Yeah," Scott replied, but it was non-committal rather than confident.

"Good night, son. Do try to get some rest. Both of you."

"Yeah," Scott said again, and Xavier turned his chair, motoring out.

When he was gone, Warren rose to pull the door shut as best he could, though it wouldn't fit right in the frame now, and the whole area around the handle was cracked. "Sorry about the door. I don't know what got into me." Scott didn't reply. "I just . . . I had to get in here. I heard you shout and I heard the furniture crashing around, and I had to get in here."

"I can't believe I didn't hear it," Scott said finally. "If you heard it, why didn't I hear it?"

"I don't know."

"I woke up when you came in. I heard _that_. So why didn't I hear that big, fucking mirror fall?"

"I don't know," Warren said again, turning around, but staying by the door. "I'm sure Xavier will figure-"

"Hell, no! Don't hand me shit about Xavier figuring it out! He didn't figure out the mansion was going to get attacked, or that Stryker had a hard-on for him - and he knew the bastard. I'd never _heard_ of Jason Stryker before; Charles never told me a damn thing about him until after Alkali Lake. He was here before us, here even before Jean - he must've been close to forty. The professor's first project? His first failure? So how many other failures have there been that he's not telling us about, War? He's not a god. He doesn't know everything. He can't answer everything. He can't fix everything."

Warren had stood quietly, listening through Scott's tirade, and now wondered how he ought to reply - or if he should. These were matters for which he wanted answers himself, and he doubted the full impact of Jean's death had hit him yet, even now, standing in the room she'd shared with Scott. He was still on emotional autopilot. Scott needed him, and that gave him something on which to focus. "He can't fix everything, Scott. You're right - he's not a god. People make mistakes -"

"So you're going to defend him?" It was belligerent, and Warren sighed. Scott needed to fight, he needed somewhere for the anger to go, and he'd always struck out at others when he was hurting. Usually, Warren could handle it, but tonight, he was too tired, and too heart-sore himself.

"I'm not here to defend or blame. I wasn't there -"

And he stopped, swallowing hard as the truth of that hit him yet again. He hadn't _been there_. It had been his first thought when he'd received the news from Xavier, and he couldn't help but think if he had been, he could have saved her.

After all, he could _fly_.

But he'd been in Hong Kong, asleep. Like everyone else, he'd suffered under the mental assault - it had woken him up - but he hadn't known that Jean was gone for almost forty-eight hours, and a part of him resented that. It had taken them almost a day to remember to call his office to let him know his best friend was dead? Why had it taken them a day to remember?

In any case, after that, his secretary hadn't been able to reach him for more than half a day, with the world still in chaos from the results of the assaults, and then he'd had to arrange to leave Hong Kong for the States. All together, it had taken almost five days to get back.

Jean had been dead five days.

Suddenly, he felt hands grip his upper arms. "Hey." He'd been sobbing, and hadn't heard Scott rise from the couch. "Hey, even if you'd been there, it wouldn't have made any difference."

"Yes, it would! I could have flown down to get her and pulled her out . . . . "

"So could the new guy, Kurt. He's a teleporter. But she didn't let him. Warren - she didn't _want_ to be saved."

Shocked, Warren looked up, sure he must be gaping like a fool. "What?"

Scott's face was cold, and closed. "They're all calling her a martyr, they talk about how she saved them. And she did. But she didn't have to die to do it."

"What are you talking about?" Warren hadn't heard this. Xavier hadn't told Warren this when they'd talked on the phone as Warren had made arrangements to come home.

"She left the plane, then locked us all up inside of it. She was controlling it - the whole thing. This wasn't a test tube or a book, War. She lifted the whole, goddamn _plane_. Then she turned the engines on when they weren't working. She fixed them, and more than that, kept the controls under her power until the very end - we couldn't lower the ramp, we couldn't do a fucking _thing_. And she kept that Kurt guy from teleporting out to fetch her. She flat _stopped_ him. Maybe the professor could do something like that - but Jean? She's never had that kind of strength.

"But she did it all, War - and parted the tidal wave, too. It went right by us on either side. She parted the wave, lifted the plane, and kept us inside it. Now you tell me, if she could manage all that at once, why couldn't she do it from _inside_? There was no reason she had to be outside, none at all. I've thought this through. The others don't want to hear it, but I've thought it through. She didn't _want_ to be rescued. And if you'd been there, it wouldn't have made any difference."

Warren could only stare, barely taking in this rain of words, unable to admit the implications even as he understood them perfectly. "You're saying she wanted to die?"

"Yes."

Warren just blinked, and they stood staring at each other a long time. Finally, he shook his head. "But why? Why would she want to die? That makes no sense."

Scott let him go and shrugged with one shoulder - and Warren was suddenly angry. "Why? If you're going to accuse her of essentially committing suicide, Scott, there has to be a fucking _reason_!"

But Scott just walked back to the couch and sat down again, all expression gone from his face and Warren was reminded of how he'd been in those first years - indifferent, placid . . . until he'd suddenly explode in a rage. The professor had told Warren and Hank, and later Jean, that he had so much anger inside, it scared him into suppressing it until it flat got away from him.

Like now. The rage was there in the tightness of his shoulders and the nonchalant way he leaned back into the couch . . . and in his eruptions of temper earlier at the man called Logan. But when he spoke, his voice was bland, and it made a shocking contrast to what he was actually saying. "She was tired of me. We'd been together nine years - it was a habit for her, not a relationship. Logan excited her. He was a man, not a fucked-up sob story. But she couldn't exactly get out of it, could she? What would the rest of you have thought if she'd left me for him? She told me once that she'd love me forever, but forever's a damn long time. I think I knew even then, back in Greece, that it wouldn't last, but I wanted to believe, so I did. In any case, she couldn't get out of it without looking like a bitch - and Jean never did like to look like a bitch, did she?"

Warren was too stunned to reply, stunned because Scott's theories were a lot closer to right than Warren had thought Scott could possibly know. But also stunned because, at the root of it, Scott was very, very wrong, and Warren couldn't believe that, even now, even after nine years, Scott could still be that _wrong_.

"She _loved_ you," he said, because it was both the most important thing, and the best he could rally.

The smile he got back was cynical, bitter, and annoyed. "Don't patronize me."

"I'm not. She loved you. Completely. Absolutely."

"Bullshit."

"No, _you're_ talking bullshit!" Warren was getting angry again. "And you forget who you're talking _to_. I know, Scott. I _know_ how she felt about you - I talked to her three days before that trip to the museum. We talked about _you_."

Scott appeared intrigued by that, and Warren was relieved to see some expression - any expression - on his face. "What about me?"

"Marriage. Again. We talked about you, and marriage."

Scott's expression locked down, jaw tightening, and he stared at his hands. Warren didn't need to tell him what had been discussed; it had been a point of strain for a while. Jean had wanted to get married. Scott hadn't. For the most part, Jean had kept her real feelings to herself, or at least, hadn't shared them with Scott. Warren, however, had gotten an earful. She'd always turned to him when she felt unable to talk to Scott. So he'd heard the uncertainties, the frustrations, the insecurities. He'd heard how much Jean wanted to get married, and how Scott was afraid of it, and how she didn't want to pressure him. It had been just one more of several chaffing spots that had come up in recent years, although, to Jean, it had seemed the most significant.

"He keeps putting it off - says he's not ready," she'd told Warren over the phone in that last conversation. "It's the same old song, and I know why - I _know_, War. But I worry. I'm past thirty. What if he never wants to get married? What if he's bored of me? We were all we had back then. What if he's found someone who's better suited?"

And Warren had reassured her (for the hundredth time) that Scott wasn't bored of her. "There isn't anyone, Jean. There never will be. He couldn't open up to anyone else as completely as he did with us. Our situation's too unique. You're the only woman he could ever love, I think. You're _it." _

She'd paused then on the line, and Warren had been able to hear her breathing, harsh, as if she might be crying a little. "But I don't want that kind of pressure. I don't want to be the only one. What if something happened to me?"

"I thought you were worried that he was going to leave you?"

"God, I don't know what I'm worried about anymore. I'm worried that he can't ever really love me enough - not enough to get married. But then I worry that he loves me too much, and I'm caught in this - this _jail_, this relationship that I can't possibly leave because, like you say, I'm _it_. I'm the only woman he'll let in, and if I leave him, he'd close up completely and turn into a robot or something. And it's not fucking fair! He wants all this from me - wants, wants, wants . . . . He worries all the time. He tries to act like he doesn't, but he worries whenever I talk to some other guy for more than five minutes, and if the other guy flirts with me? He goes ballistic. Well, not for real; he's always saying that he trusts me, but he _hovers_. You know how he hovers. And he gets jealous and mean. But he won't marry me. If he's so jealous and worried, why won't he marry me?"

And Warren had been unable to offer her anything except the same-ol', same-ol': "He's scared."

"I know! I know he's scared! But I get so _tired_ of him always being scared! After nine years, you'd think he'd get over it. And I know it's not that simple." He'd heard her sigh. "I'm so awful. It's not like I didn't know all this, going in. I knew. Xavier told me it wouldn't be easy. I just - I don't think I really knew how _hard_ it would be, War. Or how long it'd go on. I guess I thought I could fix him. I know you're not supposed to think that about a partner, but I did. I thought maybe if I loved him enough, he'd get over it. He'd stop being so damn neurotic."

"Well, he's not _as_ neurotic."

"I know. I know. It's just . . . on days like this, I feel so tired."

"I'll talk to him, when I get home. But you know, getting a ring on your finger isn't going to make him less neurotic, sweetheart. Or make you less frustrated when he gets that way."

"I know that, too. But at least I'll have the promise."

"Jean - you've _always_ had the promise. The rest is just the trappings."

And she'd agreed, and they'd talked then of other things. The last conversation, but Warren remembered it quite well.

And maybe . . . just maybe Scott had a point. Warren couldn't believe that Jean had really been suicidal, but she could be emotional - and irrational and impulsive when she got that way. Most of the time, she was the calm, collected, mature and scientific Dr. Grey. But sometimes she was Jean the hothead, and in a moment of crisis, maybe, just maybe . . . .

"Scott, I don't know what she was thinking, there at the end. Maybe she wasn't thinking at all. You and I both know she's been under some stress lately."

And Scott started to giggle. "Stress? Christ, Warren. Stress? She's under _some stress_ so she hops off a plane and lets a tidal wave sweep her away? That's not stress, that's lunacy!" He swallowed the giggles; they definitely weren't from amusement. "Stress - yeah. She was fucking _falling apart_ because Logan was back, she couldn't just leave me, and she didn't want to live anymore."

Warren shook his head. "Scott, she loved _you_, not Logan." Stalking over, he stood in front of where his friend was sitting on the couch. "Now listen to me - I'm only going to say this once. Jean loved you. She did not love Logan. She didn't even entirely _like_ Logan. She did, however, find him attractive, and she felt sorry for him. But that isn't love, and she knew it. She told me that _herself_ after he left the first time. And Scott, she would have told me if she _had_ been interested in him that way. You know it as well as I do."

And that broke Scott. Leaning over, his friend buried his face in his hands and sobbed so that Warren could hardly make out his question. "Then _why_? Why did she kill herself if she loved me? Why did she leave me alone if she loved me?"

Kneeling down, Warren put both arms around him and just held on, resting his chin on the top of Scott's head, his wings raised a little for extra balance. "I don't know," he said. And it was, mostly, the truth.

As soon as the sun had crept through the sitting room curtains to strike the couch, Warren stirred and rolled sideways, flexing his wings. Scott was still asleep and Warren let him be, returning to his own suite instead, where he showered and cleaned up, dressing neatly.

He'd never left Scott's room last night after his friend had cried himself back to sleep in Warren's arms. Instead, he'd settled Scott on the couch and covered him up with the afghan, then settled down on the floor right beside him, in case he had another nightmare. But he hadn't. He'd been too wrung from anger and grief. And so had Warren.

But now, showered and dressed, Warren exited his suite to pad back to Scott's. The door was still slightly ajar, and Warren peered in, reassuring himself that Scott remained sleeping. Then, hands in pockets, he headed for the elevator. Before he got far, he heard the familiar whine of a wheelchair behind him and turned. "Professor."

"Warren. How was the rest of the night?"

"We talked some, he cried some, then he fell asleep."

"And you?"

"I slept, too."

"But not as much."

"I'm not as tired. Did you find out anything in Cerebro?" Warren was sure Xavier had already been down there, as he preferred to do telepathic scans in the pre-dawn hours before most people woke. It kept things simple, he said.

But now, he just frowned faintly. "No, I didn't. While there are still high levels of anxiety among my students - understandably - none of them are showing any signs of new mutations that I can discern."

Puzzled, Warren asked, "So who moved all the furniture around Scott's room? Poltergeists?" He couldn't help but remember what one of the kids had said the night before.

Xavier's frown deepened. "Actually, I do have a theory, but it's a disquieting one." He paused and closed his eyes a moment, then said, "Yes, we are alone. Warren - I believe _Scott_ did it."

"What?"

"I believe Scott is the one who caused the damage."

"Wouldn't he _remember_ that?"

"Not necessarily. Under duress, the mind can do peculiar things, and Scott already has a long history of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that, in the grip of a nightmare, he did the damage himself, only half-conscious."

"Why would he do that?"

"The need to express his anger. Did you notice what he said about at least two of the items involved? The mirror and the afghan? Both were objects of contention in his relationship with Jean, even if mild contention. By destroying them, or attempting to, he is working out some of his rage at her for dying. Rage is a normal part of the grieving process, but her death was anything but normal, and everything about it conspires to complicate his responses. Given Scott's previous patterns and tendencies, distorted grief of the rage type seems a logical direction for his grief to turn."

Warren wrinkled his nose. Xavier was a licensed psychologist, and certainly, he knew Scott's psyche inside and out - but that was part of the problem. Scott wasn't Xavier's _patient_, and Warren wasn't entirely sure whether to trust such a clinical assessment. Analyzing Scott sounded like the professor's means of coping with his own grief.

_And what's yours? _he asked himself.

Well, being here and taking care of them, he supposed.

"Okay - it's not that I doubt Scott could pitch a fit like that. He's done it before. And it's not that I doubt he's angry." After the previous night, Warren understood exactly how angry (and hurt) he _was_. "But it just . . . it sounds a little fantastic, that he could do all that damage and not remember it. Plus, I'm pretty sure he was on the couch when I kicked the door in. I heard him fall off. I startled him and he rolled off onto the floor. But just a few seconds before, I'd heard the mirror crash down and furniture moving around. That's _why_ I kicked the door in and didn't go back for my key." Well, that and the fact he'd panicked. "How could he have done all that, lying on the couch?"

"He may not have fallen off the couch, Warren. Your entry may have startled him, snapping him into full consciousness, and he fell down or tripped himself."

"So you think he was . . . sleep walking, essentially? Trashing the suite?"

"Yes - it's the only logical explanation I can arrive at."

"And you're going to tell him that?"

The professor shook his head and, reaching out, hit the call button for the elevator. "I won't tell him this morning, no. I don't think he's ready to hear it."

"I don't think he is, either."

"But he will need to be told, especially if this turns out not to be an isolated event."

"You mean he could flip out again?" The elevator arrived and they entered together.

"He could. You and I both know that his separation anxiety makes the loss of Jean one of the worst things that could have happened to him. It _will_ have ramifications, and complicate the healing process. We never entirely get over loss, Warren. We learn to live with it, and we heal - but if we lose too much, or lose too often, the trauma becomes increasingly difficult to heal _from_. That's why it's so important that you're here, so he remembers he's not alone."

The elevator reached the bottom, but Xavier held down the 'close doors' while he studied Warren, who shuffled his feet, uncomfortable, and perhaps resentful, too. "And I think you need him just as much. The three of you had a very _rare_ thing, very precious - but even with Jean gone, you and Scott still have each other. Neither of you is alone. Scott needs to remember that - and so do you." He released the button so the doors could open, requiring their public faces. Warren had no time to reply, as Xavier had no doubt intended.

Students crossed and crisscrossed the main hall, heading to breakfast. A few gave him double-takes, no doubt those who hadn't seen him the night before. But in the professor's company, he was accepted as belonging there, and he realized suddenly that he hadn't been at the mansion since Christmas, over nine months previously. "How many new students have come since my last visit?"

"Ten - no, make that eleven."

"The total's over thirty now, isn't it?"

"Thirty-three."

Warren didn't state the obvious - that enrollment would likely increase exponentially now and the school could quickly become understaffed. He also didn't bring up the point that boarding schools needed at least one nurse on the premises, for insurance purposes. Xavier knew all that as well as Warren did, and this wasn't the time to discuss Board matters that would just reopen the wound.

They reached the dining hall-cum-cafeteria, and headed for the table with Ororo. Yet Ro wasn't alone. Beside her, dressed in a topcoat of truly eccentric (Warren would have said atrocious) taste, sat a blue man. The darkness of his skin made it difficult for Warren to see his features clearly until he glanced up at the sound of Xavier's wheelchair. Then he did a _shocking_ thing.

He disappeared -

- only to reappear with a popping sound, crouched at Warren's _feet_ and stuttering in something that definitely wasn't English, arms thrown over his curly hair, and _tail_ lashing like a distressed cat's. It had a spade on the end of it, Warren noticed, astonishment causing him to focus on the trivial. "Hello?" he said over the other man's babble.

The rest of the dining hall fell silent, and after a moment, the man at his feet fell silent, too, twisting his head just a little to peer out from behind his hands. They had two large digits and one opposing thumb each, and his eyes were yellow, their expression wide-eyed. All his movements seemed exaggerated and theatrical, and Warren resisted laughing. "Hello," he said again.

Ororo stood. "Kurt -" she said.

The blue man - Kurt, apparently - cocked his head further, and drew down his arms, although he remained at Warren's feet. "You are a man," he said, as if surprised by that fact.

Warren's lips tipped up. "So are you."

And the blue man grinned, revealing a mouth full of very sharp teeth. "I am Kurt Wagner, the Incredible Nightcrawler!" He had a Germanic accent, and rose to execute a rather florid bow with all the grace of a stage performer.

Ororo approached to add, "Kurt is Catholic. Devout."

That began to explain some things, and Warren glanced over at the professor, who hadn't interfered, merely watched. A low buzz had begun in the background again, soft discussion of the drama among the kids. "Kurt," Xavier said over the noise, "may I introduce you to Warren Worthington, one of my first students. These days, Warren helps run the school, although not as a teacher. Warren, Kurt Wagner used to perform with the Munich Circus."

"_Der Jahrmarkt_," Kurt added with a smile.

Ah. And that would explain some other things. Warren- - whose business career depended on a fast assessment of people - found Wagner to be a curious mixture of shy humility and cheerful spectacle. Despite the bow, he'd backed up now to stand behind Ororo, head turned sideways to avoid staring at Warren face-on. "It's nice to meet you, Kurt." Warren didn't offer a hand to shake, unsure if the blue man would accept it. He suspected that anything too forward might frighten Wagner into a full retreat. The man radiated a fragile peculiarity. Then again, looking the way he did, Warren could only imagine what his life must have been like.

Turning to the professor, he said, "I'll get some breakfast," and headed for the buffet table where the selections were spread out. As the school had grown, breakfast had turned into a continental affair to allow for ease in serving. Grabbing a tray, Warren began filling it, giving Kurt time to regain his mental footing, and his dignity.

Returning to the table, Warren passed tea and grapefruit to Xavier, who took them with thanks. Seating himself then, he opened a jar of peanut butter that he'd nabbed and began spreading it on a bagel. Kurt watched this with great interest. "It is not the usual spread, _ja_?"

"Scott likes his bagels with peanut butter," Warren explained. Then again, Scott ate peanut butter on almost anything, from bagels to apples to fried banana-and-peanut-butter sandwiches.

Kurt tilted his head. "So the bagel is not for you?"

Warren didn't reply, just took a bite out of the poppy seed muffin he'd gotten for himself.

Wagner's eyebrows rose. "The professor tells me that you are _the_ Warren Worthington."

Warren snorted and shot his old tutor a glance. "Yes, I'm afraid so."

"_Ein Milliardär_ who fetches the breakfasts of other men."

Nonplused, Warren opened his mouth to point out that it was easier for him than for the professor, and Scott was still sleeping . . . but no mockery distorted the blue features. In fact, Wagner was smiling. "_Sie sind faszinierend, Herr Worthington." _And he returned to his own breakfast as if the conversation were over.

Not sure what to make of that, Warren decided to change the subject. "Who - outside the school - knows about the attack on it?" Visions of parents and potential lawsuits danced in his head.

"Nothing has been revealed to the press," Xavier assured him.

"I'm more concerned about the kids themselves when they call up Mom and Dad for the weekly check-in. 'Yes, I made a B+ on my math test and an A on my English essay, oh, and by the way, some crazy black ops guys stormed the school and abducted six students out of their beds, but I got away down a rabbit hole into Wonderland."

Ororo snorted and Xavier smiled. The blue man, Kurt, seemed unsure if Warren were jesting. "I understand your concern," Xavier replied, "but even our youngest children know the necessity of secrecy for certain aspects of the school - just as you did, once."

Warren shrugged, not entirely convinced. "Kids get excited. They talk."

"True. But these are not normal children. And only about a third of them are still in contact with their parents at all."

"What about the Drake kid?" Warren asked. "I understand his family found out the full truth?"

"They did," Xavier said. "The entire Boston incident" - he glanced at Ororo - "was unfortunate. I have, however, modified their memories, along with that of a few others, such as the police. The Drakes do not remember that Bobby visited them, and they think the burn damage to their lawn was the result of a severe car accident that occurred during the . . . blackout."

Warren didn't miss how Xavier spoke of Stryker's use of him. He also didn't miss the fact that Xavier had indulged in some extensive memory rewriting - an act that he typically struggled to avoid for ethical reasons.

"Like Jean's disappearance," the professor went on, "we have been able to cover anything that might connect Stryker to the school . . . and might endanger our students."

"Mmm," Warren replied. He didn't disagree with the need to protect the kids. That was their first duty. But in his experience, cover-ups tended to breed like bunnies - one here required two there, which in turn required six, and so on. He ought to know, since he lived inside a tower of them, but he didn't want to use the breakfast table to find out all the details. That would come soon enough; if he were to be of any use, he'd need those details. The professor had one form of damage control, and Warren had another.

Just now, though, he had another concern that was closer to home. Picking up the bagel, he glanced at his old mentor. "Is he awake yet?"

"No, but perhaps he should be. He won't appreciate being left to sleep until noon."

Warren snorted at that. "How times change." Rising, he nodded to the rest. "Later." And to Kurt Wagner, "Nice to meet you."

Then he headed out of the dining hall while students milled about, getting ready for their first class of the day. Life went on, even when it felt as if the whole world should have stopped.


	5. Five, Six, Pick up Stix

Structural damage to the mansion was surprisingly minimal, given that it had been invaded by close to a hundred special ops forces only a few days previously. But then, their goal had been to secure the inhabitants - and Cerebro - and they were professionals. Most of the destruction to the house itself had been done by its _defenders_.

Water damage had warped the wood in the hallway where Bobby Drake had erected his wall of ice, and some of the lamps and furniture had been destroyed when Stryker had shattered it. A gaping hole marked the place where Piotr Rasputin had put a soldier through a wall, and there were small punctures here and there in the paneling from tranquilizer darts that had missed their mark, as well as occasional bloodstains on wood and carpet from the human damage done by Wolverine's claws. The main kitchen had been shot up, but the staff kitchen was still pristine. Two of the round gable windows had been blown out by invaders, as well as about half the mirrors and some windows by Teresa Roarke's sonic screams. The sub-basement had been barely touched . . . except for Cerebro, of course. Stryker had taken those components he'd needed, and left the room ripped apart. The cannibalized sections were now buried under fifty feet of water or more, back at Alkali Lake. Replacing them would be tricky.

Logan left Cerebro to Xavier, but the rest, he took on himself. He didn't have much to offer a _school_, at least not until the next time it was invaded, so he offered what he had - some skill with a saw and hammer, and a trip or three with Xavier's charge card to the local Home Depot. Xavier had suggested calling in professional carpenters, but both Cyclops and Wolverine had nixed that in a rare moment of consolidated opinion. "We'll fix it," Summers had said.

Despite their agreement, Logan had looked at him with open surprise. "You know which end of a nail to hit, junior?"

"You know how to read an assembly chart, Logan? Or was reading left off your military education?"

"Gentlemen!" Xavier had glared at them both.

Repairs had begun the day after their return. They'd started by chucking what wasn't worth fixing, and all the children had pitched in, cleaning up glass and other things, though Wolverine had kept for himself the task of checking throw carpets for blood. Kurt Wagner - 'but in the Munich Circus I was The Incredible Nightcrawler' - hung tarpaulins over the broken third-story windows, since reaching them was easiest for him, while Ororo had clucked and fussed over her trampled gardens, and Summers had boarded up the destroyed kitchen window. By the day's end, the mansion looked more like a place undergoing some renovations than a home invaded.

The second day had been given over to replacing lamps, chairs, rugs, mirrors and glass panes that didn't have to be special ordered. And by the third day, the children had started classes again. The professor thought a return to normalcy important.

Summers and Logan had continued repairs, and Logan was forced to admit the kid did know what to do with a hammer, as well as sheathing edges, flashing paper and sealant for the big garden window in the main kitchen. It took the two of them two days to replace that with brand new, better-insulated Pella windows. Mostly, they'd worked in silence, but at one point, Scott had confessed, "I've wanted to replace this thing for a while. It was drafty as hell." Logan hadn't replied, but he'd been reminded, yet again, that he was the stranger. He couldn't have said if the windows had been drafty or not.

Logan didn't think Summers had meant to put him in his place; the kid had just been trying to make conversation. But maybe it had contributed, just a little, to what he'd said later that same afternoon. "She did make a choice, Scott. It was you." Logan hadn't meant anything cruel by that, either - at least, not consciously. It was only after the words were out of his mouth that he'd realized how stupid they'd sounded. But Summers had already stalked off.

"Damn," he'd muttered to the wall, then wondered why he cared if he'd hurt Preppy Boy's feelings? He wasn't sticking around for Summers' sake.

For the most part, Logan worked alone, which was how he preferred it. Sometimes, one of the older boys would attach himself for some unfathomable reason - the big Russian kid from Brighton Beach, or Bobby Drake, or the silent boy with the lizard tongue, Artie. Logan liked Artie best, having little need for chatter, but Drake seemed to need distraction the most.

"They don't remember anything," he told Logan one afternoon, almost angrily, while they worked on the wall Piotr had destroyed, replacing the interior struts and drywall, and blowing in some insulation while they were at it.

"Who?" Logan asked over the sound of the blower.

"My family. They don't remember anything. The professor wiped their memories."

"Ain't that for the best?"

Drake didn't reply for a while, then said only, "Maybe."

Logan turned off the blower. "Look kid, not many people get a chance to redo something."

"But they're just going to react the same way! That's why I didn't tell them the first time, even though the professor said I should."

"There are ways to tell people something, and there are _ways_, y'know? Back in Boston, your parents knew you were in trouble. But if you go in when you're not, and if you take somebody a little more respectable than the _art_ teacher" - he snorted - "you might get a different reception, eh? I ain't sayin' it'll be a cake walk, but as I recall, they weren't tossing you out on your ear, even then. They were trying. Can't run twenty miles in a day, y'know? Go talk to your parents, take Xavier along, and be sure your little brother ain't there. Then give 'em time."

Drake sat through Logan's impromptu lecture, face somewhere between rebellious and despondent. Finally, he said only, "I'll think about it."

"You do that," Logan replied. "Now, open another package of the insulation." And they got back to repairs.

By the time Winged Boy (as Logan took to thinking of him) showed up at the mansion, only the most difficult damage remained. For a week's work, that wasn't half bad. But what he was going to do around the place when it was finally fixed, Logan had no idea.

* * *

Jean Grey had been the mother figure at the mansion.

Or that's how Ororo Munroe had always seen it. Ororo was a fighter, a survivor, an ex-thief turned vigilante who masqueraded as a high-school history teacher and occasional disciplinarian. At most, she might be a big sister to the kids, but she wasn't the one they turned to with cuts and bruises, broken bones and broken hearts. She didn't know how to mother them because she'd never had a mother, and she didn't deal well with vulnerability - not in herself, and not, really, in others. From the day she'd arrived in the States, she'd held just a little apart, prizing her control and self-sufficiency. She might sympathize, but she didn't empathize. There was always just that little bit of space.

Warmth had been easier for Jean, and openness, and trust. She'd learned trust young, and circumstance had never forced her to unlearn it in order to survive. Ororo had been both drawn to that, and distrustful of it, alternately admiring and jealous. Yet she'd disliked the petty side of herself, so she'd suppressed her jealousy until one of her more defiant students, Emma Frost, had asked if she weren't envious of Jean for having a man in her bed while she, Ororo, slept alone?

Ro had been genuinely shocked. Shocked because she'd suspected Emma (an emerging telepath with dubious morals) of snooping, but also shocked that the girl would assume her jealousy had anything to do with a man, much less Scott. "No," she'd replied, perhaps a bit primly, then after a moment's inspiration, she'd turned the question back on her questioner. "Why? Are you?"

The girl had tossed her blond hair and sauntered off, but the uncomfortable question had stayed with Ororo because, in truth, she _was_ jealous of Jean Grey, jealous of Jean's ability to draw people in**:** children, adults, it didn't matter. A doctor needed that ability to win others' trust, and Jean, with her soft smile and gentle hands, was a natural.

So Ororo had tried to learn how to mother others by watching Jean, yet she'd felt so inadequate, fumbling in her attempts to reach out, until the day Jean had said to her, offhand, "You've got such a wonderful, calm presence with the new children, so self-assured. They gravitate to you for it. I wish I had that."

And Ororo - astonished - had barely remembered to say, "Thank you." Scott had told her once that to see yourself as others saw you was to have a moral experience. So on that day, Ororo had stopped being jealous of Jean Grey. And now, two years later, she just hoped she could summon a little of Jean's empathy to mix with her own calm when the smallest of the children crawled into her bed on the nights after the invasion, and Alkali Lake. She feared that she was failing miserably.

It had been Kurt to whom Ro had turned on that first night when she'd found herself with a bed full of children. He'd been shy at first, but then had settled in, perching on one of her chairs, to tell them fairytales and perform magic tricks, and in the days that had followed, he'd become the mansion's pied piper, keeping the youngest children occupied - to everyone's relief. By the time Warren had arrived, five days later, Ororo could no longer imagine the mansion without him.

In contrast, Logan had avoided interacting if he could, coming and going like a stray dog that still hasn't decided if it had found a home. Even if he'd come back with the team and appeared set to stay, he wasn't comfortable. He'd kept himself busy fixing things, and some of the children had sometimes tried to help, but it had surprised her when - of all people - Bobby Drake attached himself to The Wolverine Repair Squad, as the kids took to calling it. Yet Ororo thought it had surprised Logan more. "Ain't the kid got any other guy friends?"

"John was his friend," Ororo had pointed out, and Logan hadn't replied.

Soon, the outside cavalry began arriving. Warren's advent had been predictable. If she'd figured out nothing else about Jean, Scott, and Warren in the nine years since coming to Westchester, Ororo had come to understand that tripartite relationship was as immutable as it was convoluted, and she sometimes wondered if Scott wouldn't have been quicker to marry Jean if he could have married Warren, too - even though Ro knew Scott just a bit uncomfortable with men. Once, she'd asked Jean (a bit sarcastically) if Jean never worried that her fiancé might run off with her best friend? Jean had smiled with a frustrating, enigmatic placidity and replied, "Sometimes I wish they would. They need to get it out of their system." Then she'd grinned at Ro's shock until her dimples had showed. "It's not either-or, Ro. It's both-and. Warren's not my rival - we've always revolved around Scott. We love him. He loves us." She'd tilted her head to the side, adding, "It's . . . complicated."

It wasn't, however, just Warren who arrived from outside. On a Friday afternoon a few days after Warren had shown up, a bright yellow Nissan _Xterra_ pulled into the drive and parked just below the front steps. There were bumper stickers plastered all over the truck rear, including one with rainbow letters that proclaimed, "Mutants are people, too," and a short, plump woman in a purple skirt climbed down from the cab to open the rear and haul out five suitcases. Two big dogs with a lot of fur followed the suitcases. The woman's graying, frizzy hair was pinned back in a giant clip, and Ororo thought she looked familiar, but couldn't place who she was until Scott unexpectedly came hurrying down the stairs, threw open the front door, and shouted, "Edna!"

The woman dropped all her suitcases to engulf him in a giant bear hug while the big dogs seemed bent on knocking them both over in their enthusiasm. Surprised, Ororo pulled in her chin; Scott permitted only a handful of people to encroach on his personal space that intimately, and she followed him out the door to approach down the stairs. Turning, he gestured to her. "Edna, that's Ororo Munroe - you remember Ro? Ro, this is Edna McCoy - Hank's mom."

Ah. Ororo had met Hank's parents only once, a long time ago, but she could remember thinking at the time that meeting Edna had explained quite a lot about Hank. "It is good to see you again," Ro said politely, if not entirely sure why Edna had come.

Scott must have been equally unsure, and a good deal less cautious about asking. "What are you doing here?" It wasn't rude so much as curious.

Edna McCoy smiled at him and patted his cheek with sad fondness. "Hank called to tell me what had happened. He'll be up in a week or two, but he won't be able to stay long."

Scott glanced at her bevy of suitcases. "How long are you staying?"

"For as long as I'm needed." She glanced at him again, then away, either uncertain or just gentle with the truth. "The school needs at least a nurse on the premises, Scott, for insurance purposes. I can stay for a while, until arrangements can be made." Smiling again, Edna patted his shoulder. "It gives me something to do these days, since Norton died. It's a little lonely in Deerfield."

And oh, Ro thought, Edna McCoy was clever. She'd undercut any resentment Scott might feel about her moving in on Jean's 'territory' by making it seem like a favor to her - and by reminding him that she, too, understood what it was like to lose a spouse. Ororo had known that replacing Jean as the school medic was a pressing need, but wouldn't have wanted to be the one coming in to do so.

"I didn't know you were a nurse," Ororo said now, "I thought you owned a farm?" She came out to help with the suitcases, and tried to avoid the dogs - who were a little too friendly.

Edna called them down. "Jasmine! Lucy!" Then to Ororo, "I started out as a nurse a long time ago, before I married. As for the farm, I sold it after Norton died. It was too much for me to keep up alone. I figured it was time to retire."

"Edna's idea of 'retirement' is to organize anti-war and pro-mutant protests, and work for Barack Obama's campaign as a volunteer." Scott had hefted the two heaviest suitcases and was carrying them up the steps.

"Without something to do, I get _bored_, Scott." Edna gathered the other bags and her dogs, and headed in after him, leaving Ororo to follow, bemused, with the last bag.

There was already a crowd at the door, and Edna stopped to ask each of the children their names, where they were from, and what their power was, as if it were a natural trio of questions. She patted hair and pinched cheeks and grinned at everyone, and the kids followed after her up the stairs when she promised that she'd brought treats. Ororo handed over her suitcase to Piotr, who was as curious as the rest, and let the impromptu parade depart. The professor had motored out of his office. Edna raised a hand to him but didn't pause to converse, and Ororo narrowed her eyes in Xavier's direction.

"Was bringing her here your idea?" she asked softly.

_Edna's actually,_ the professor sent back telepathically. _She phoned me after she'd spoken to Hank. I think she welcomed the opportunity for a change of scenery._

_And she is someone whom Scott will accept._

_Indeed. She can stay for some months while we find a permanent medic._

_Why cannot Hank come back himself?_

_Hank has his own career now, Ororo. He will be helping us interview for a new doctor, but his work at the CDC is too important. I can't ask him to abandon that._

_Jean did research here._

_But Jean's research involved mutant genetics specifically. Hank is a biochemist, and his primary interest is in the microbiology of infectious diseases. His talents serve everyone best elsewhere._

Ro knew that not all the professor's students chose to return to the institute as adults, and the professor had often said that the status of mutants was better promoted if most of his students returned to 'normal' society to become contributing members. So the Hanks and Warrens might remain associated with the school, but their occupations - and lives - lay elsewhere.

_At least the students will have a mother figure again,_ Ro offered finally.

Xavier glanced up at her. _They already had one, Ororo. Everyone in this mansion has leaned on you in the past week. But you, too, need space to rest . . . and to heal. Besides, as Warren has now mentioned to me three times in less than forty-eight hours, the school is in danger of outgrowing itself. It's time to consider some additional staff, don't you think?_

_Mrs. McCoy may stay permanently, then, even after we hire a doctor?_

_I'm not sure of that, but I do think we could use the extra assistance in the meantime._

* * *

"So, like, we're Grand Central Station all of a sudden."

It was Rogue's distinctive Southern drawl, and Kitty looked up from the book she'd been reading, cross-legged in the middle of her bed - _The Once and Future King_, an assignment for the professor's class. While she respected the professor and appreciated everything he'd done for her and the rest of them, she really preferred her math class to English Lit. Math was logical, predictable - right or wrong; literary analysis just made her cranky. How could one ever be sure one's interpretation was the correct one? And sometimes she thought all those themes they found in The Classics (tm) were eighty percent invention anyway. _Moby Dick_ was boring, as far as Kitty was concerned. She'd rather spend time on algebra than big, white whales. (That her math teacher was forty years younger than her English teacher, with killer cheekbones, wasn't something Kitty figured into her course preferences. Not consciously, anyway.)

"What do you mean?" Kitty asked now.

Rogue flung herself down spread-eagled on her own bed. The two girls, and Jubilee, shared a room. "Well, first, we got Mr. Sharp Dresser With Wings, and now, Mrs. McCoy. I swear, she's got this amethyst pendant that's big enough to choke a mule. And she makes her own soap. I mean, who makes her own soap when you can buy Ivory for, like, sixty-five cents a bar?"

Kitty shrugged and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ears. She'd mulled over doing something with it instead of letting it hang, straight and mousy, in her eyes, and she wondered, if she got a stylish cut like Ms. Munroe, would Piotr look at her twice instead of pat her on the head as if she were five, not almost sixteen? ('Almost sixteen' sounded so much better than 'just fifteen.') "Pete talked to Mrs. McCoy a while yesterday; he says he likes her, but then, she came from a farm, too. I think they bonded over cows and collies. Apparently, she has a son who used to live here. As for the guy with wings, I don't know anything about him. Ask Jubilee or Bobby."

Rogue had been at the institute for scarcely a month, and Kitty hadn't been there much longer, but Jubilee was one of the oldest students in residence, not just in chronological years.

"Where _is_ Jubilee?" Rogue asked, lifting her head but not her body.

"I have no idea. Try Bobby then."

"I dunno where _Bobby_ is, neither."

"Probably with Logan."

Rogue sighed dramatically. "Probably. And how weird is _that_? But I don't want to ask him about the guy with wings; he'll just get jealous. You know how he is." Abruptly, Rogue sat and swung her legs over the side of her bed. "Let's go look for Jubes."

"Rogue, I have homework."

Standing, Rogue reached over to snag the book out of Kitty's hands and shut it - losing Kitty's place in the process - "Hey!"

"Come on, Brainiac. You study too much. It's _Saturday_. Who studies on Saturday?" And getting a grip on Kitty's upper arm, Rogue hauled her younger roommate off the bed and out the door. "Besides," Rogue said casually once they were headed downstairs, "I don't think it's a good idea for Jubes to be alone so much, y'know? It's not . . . Jubilee-like."

And Kitty couldn't argue with that, but the invasion had changed them all. Rogue had become more assertive, and Jubilee less garrulous. Piotr had started pestering the adults to give him a pass-code to the Danger Room, and Bobby-with-a-workbelt was suddenly trailing Wolverine around the mansion. Jones sat staring at a black TV screen, and Artie never slept for an entire night in his own bed. As for Kitty, she wasn't sure exactly what had changed for her, but she had a harder time staying solid than she'd experienced almost since she'd arrived. And when she and Rogue passed through the doorway into the game room, Kitty couldn't look at the three small holes in the wooden paneling where tranquilizer darts had struck it, darts meant for her. They were really too small to be noticed casually, but Kitty knew exactly where they were.

On October thirty-first, Halloween - only eight days after Jean's death - Scott turned twenty-nine. Normally, Halloween was the most popular holiday at the mansion, the one day a year when the more obvious mutant students could go out in public without fear. But this year, no one celebrated much, and the annual party was cancelled - a near-unanimous decision by the student body even though the professor had encouraged them to hold it anyway**:** "There is nothing wrong with the gymnasium" - which had been the former mansion ballroom, in fact. Yet the students weren't ready for celebrations, even that one, maybe especially that one, the holiday they regarded as their own. Only a few went out; the rest stayed home to answer the door for the (very occasional) trick-or-treater.

As for Scott's birthday, Edna McCoy baked him a small pound cake, which was served late that night in the staff room, because Scott hated having a fuss made. It sported one candle and Dutch-chocolate icing, and was split six ways between Scott, Warren, Ororo, Edna, Kurt, and the professor. That Logan hadn't been invited wasn't remarked on. There was pistachio ice cream on the side, because Warren had bought it and that was his favorite. No one gave Scott presents even if (in a few cases) they'd already bought them. After the cake was eaten, the six of them went their separate ways.

Ororo found her attic unexpectedly child-free that night, but she wasn't able to take advantage of it for sleep. When she closed her eyes, she saw only avalanches of water, even though she didn't normally have nightmares. Waking in a cold sweat, she put on a long-sleeved t-shirt with the Xavier logo and a pair of running tights, intending to go for a jog, but when she exited the front door, she found Scott sitting on the grand entry steps, wrapped in a fleece blanket, smoking - and not smoking the pipe he occasionally still indulged in with Xavier. "I had thought you had quit?"

"I quit for Jean."

Wrinkling her nose, she sat down beside him. "This time, why not quit for yourself? It is a nasty habit."

He didn't reply, just took a long drag, then crushed out the half-smoked cigarette under the heel of his loafer. There were, she noticed, at least four other butts beside it on the walkway. She also noticed that he was holding something in his other hand. "What's that?" she asked, pointing to the lump, and he passed it over. It turned out to be a silk shirt, washed in shades of blue like an aurora borealis. She recognized it as the shirt he'd been wearing the first day she'd met him in Cairo nine years ago, the day that he, the professor, and the rest had rescued her from Amahl Farouk.

"I got that from Jean on my first birthday at the mansion," he said now. "Really, it was my second, but it was the first they knew to celebrate. Jean said it's the same shade my eyes used to be. She told me it'd look good on me, so I didn't wear it for a long time."

"Because it would look good on you?" Ororo thought she must have misunderstood Scott's abbreviated explanation.

"I didn't want to look good," he elaborated, although it didn't clarify much. "You know where I found it tonight?"

"No." Ro wondered where this was leading.

"I found it on my bed. It was in my closet when I went down to have cake. But when I came back, it was lying, spread out, on our bed."

Ororo had no idea what to say to that. Shirts did not take themselves off hangers and walk over to beds. "Scott . . . ."

"I'm not making it up, Ro." He pulled out a pack of cigarettes - Camels, she noticed - from his breast pocket, and lit another, spitting smoke. "Somebody's fucking with me."

"Scott, no one would do that -"

"Then who got it out my goddamned closet? It sure as hell wasn't me."

"I don't know," she said, at a loss.

"I'd say it was Wolverine, but he doesn't know about the shirt. I know he doesn't know about the shirt."

She resisted rolling her eyes. "Even if he did, Logan would not do such a thing."

"Oh, yeah? You know what he said to me the other day? We were coming out of Xavier's office, and he said, 'She made another choice. She chose you.' Who the hell does he think he is? She was my fucking _fiancée_."

"Scott, I will hardly argue that he is a master of diplomacy. Personally, I find him rather abrasive. But then, so are you, at times."

"Duly noted."

"I believe that he meant well."

"I don't give a rat's ass what he meant." He was still holding his lighter, and now flicked it back to life. Then holding up the shirt, he lit one edge of it, tossing the burning fabric down on the steps in front of them. Aghast, Ororo watched it turn to ash, but didn't dare protest beyond a small gasp.

* * *

Like Kurt, Edna McCoy had fit herself right into mansion life, but after a week, Logan still wasn't sure what to make of Winged Boy. Worthington spent the bulk of his days in his suite on his laptop or cell phone, doing God alone knew what. When he'd first shown up, Logan had expected him to act rich and spoilt, full of demands and expectations. Instead, he drifted quietly about the place like a feather on the breeze, and Logan grew curious. The fact Worthington had known Jean only piqued his interest further, yet when he asked Ororo about him, she replied, "Why do you not just ask Warren himself?" But Logan didn't want to ask Winged Boy; he didn't think Worthington liked him much. And Xavier's answer hadn't been any different, "If you wish to know about Warren, Logan, then ask Warren."

There was, of course, one other adult he might have asked, but Logan wasn't about to inquire of Summers. So that left him with the students, and if he felt a bit foolish for turning to them for answers, his curiosity had gotten the better of him. Seeking out Marie one afternoon, he found her in the library in the company of Bobby Drake. Sunlight fell through the window to make parallelograms on polished mahogany, and sitting down across from them at a table, he folded hands on the top. They looked back at him with wide eyes, and he wondered what they thought he'd almost caught them at. "Worthington," he began. "Who is he?"

Marie actually blushed, and Logan guessed she'd fallen for the green eyes, cultured look, and big white wings like half the rest of the girls in the place. Drake was frowning, although not at Marie. "What do you mean?"

"I was told Worthington knew Jeannie. And he seems pretty damn tight with Summers."

Drake glanced at Marie, and the frown deepened. "Mr. Worthington and Mr. Summers went to college together, at Yale. They were roommates. Now, he shows up for Christmas and stuff, and brings presents for the kids who don't have families. He's pretty nice, actually."

Logan grunted in response, and after a moment of silence, Marie added, "Jubilee told me that he was one of the first students, along with Dr. Grey, Mr. Summers, and Miss Munroe. His family owns Worthington Steel, plus a lot of other companies. He's really rich."

"Xavier is really rich," Logan said.

"Not like Mr. Worthington," Drake countered. "Professor Xavier is old New England money. Mr. Worthington is Fortune 500."

Logan grunted again. "So how'd he wind up Summers' college roomie? His family friends with Summers's family or somethin'?"

"Mr. Summers' family?" Drake blinked, as if surprised. "Mr. Summers doesn't have a family, Logan. He's an orphan. You didn't know that? It's not a secret."

In fact, Logan hadn't known that because he'd never troubled to ask. "So how'd they meet?"

"I don't know," Drake said, and Marie shrugged in silent agreement. "I guess they met when they were students here."

"What about Jeannie?"

"The same?"

"Worthington ain't married?"

"No."

"Ever been married?"

"Not that I know of."

"Hmm," Logan replied and rose, heading out of the library through the den, a bit surprised to find Worthington and Summers both in there, Summers on the couch watching the news and Worthington with his ever-present laptop and cell phone, watching Summers. It wasn't obvious, but Logan didn't miss how Worthington had positioned himself in a chair so that he could keep an eye on Summers. Neither man looked up at Logan as he crossed the den, though Logan could tell by the set of Summers's shoulders that they were aware of him.

Logan wasn't sure that he'd gotten his fundamental questions answered, but he had learned a few things.

* * *

Raven Darkholme had long ago shed her human name for her mutant one**:** Mystique. It was easier to remember when she spent so much of her time as someone else, immersing herself in her roles like any good actress.

But sometimes, she needed a break from it all. Even if she'd managed to change some of Kelly's positions closer to those she could stomach, she still couldn't stand his wife, his daughter, or his dog - and not because she feared exposure. The spoilt princess Jennifer had gone off to college just that fall, the dumb beast was inclined to lick anyone who petted it, and Kelly's estrangement from Sharon was an open secret. Kelly and his wife might occupy the same house, but not the same bed, and their varied schedules rarely brought them into contact with one another except for formal dinners and public appearances when it was required that Kelly look respectable.

Thus, when Kelly took a private vacation at Baldhead Island in North Carolina during fall recess, his wife was neither surprised nor suspicious; 2005 wasn't an election year. Mystique had used the recess first to keep tabs on Stryker, then to stage the rescue of Erik and the assault on Stryker's base in Canada. She and Erik had returned to face the turmoil that had followed, taking advantage of the chaos to re-establish themselves in a flat in downtown Washington. With Toad and Sabretooth lost, it was possible for them - and their new trainee, Pyro - to hide in plain sight.

But as it became clear that the true cause of the Blackout was being concealed, Mystique wasn't sure if she should feel relieved or angry. Erik seemed unconcerned, yet part of Mystique wanted the complete nature of Stryker's crimes to be exposed - and Xavier in the bargain.

"Why?" Erik had asked her.

"Why not?" she'd retorted.

He'd simply looked at her over the top of his spectacles. "Raven, really." He only called her Raven when he was disappointed in her.

Of course she had no vendetta against the children at the school (even when she did what was necessary there), and she was well aware that half the mansion's security lay in its anonymity. If it became widely known the kids were mutants, their little lives wouldn't be worth living. Then again, hers hadn't been either, from the age of eleven on. There had been no special school for her, no rescue from the viciousness of others, only her own native intelligence to save her until Erik had discovered her nine years later and taken her under his wing. Everything she knew, she owed to him. But her strength, _that_ she owed to herself, owed to surviving hatred and fear, and it might be good for Xavier's privileged pack to learn some strength, too, along with their math, grammar, and chemistry. They were, in their own way, just as spoilt as Kelly's vacuous daughter.

Still, Erik made no move to expose the truth, so Mystique didn't, either. But she did wonder why President McKenna kept key information to himself when he had to know more than he was letting on. Most of all, she wondered how long he planned to _keep_ that information to himself. So she put on the face of Robert Kelly once again and made a private appointment with the president. If Kelly wasn't quite as senior as his fellow Democratic senator from Massachusetts - Kennedy - he was still senior enough to merit a private meeting.

McKenna looked, Kelly thought, five years older when he welcomed the senator into his office. "Bob, what can I do for you?"

Mystique shook the proffered hand and took the seat McKenna offered, accepting the glass of scotch, which she set untouched on the end table beside her. "Actually," she said, "I was curious, sir. I remember the, ah, discussion, in this very office with Col. Stryker, before I left for Baldhead - before the Blackout."

She didn't say more than that, and McKenna shot her a glance. "What about it?"

"He was convinced that a certain school in Westchester was the base of mutant terrorist operations."

"Yes?"

"You gave him permission to investigate. I wondered what came of it?"

McKenna - like most politicians - had mastered the art of an easy lie. "Nothing came of it, why?"

"Nothing?"

"No, senator, nothing. It's a school - as you insisted at the time, if I recall. Stryker was paranoid. I don't know how he got that image of a plane over their basketball court, but he manipulated enough other facts, I'd hardly put it past him to present me with covert surveillance photos that were manipulated, too."

And Mystique was frustrated. She wasn't sure why she'd assumed the president would confide in Kelly, but she realized that she had - and she hadn't made any contingency plans for what to do if he refused, beyond revealing that she knew more than Kelly ought to know. She should have talked to Erik before arranging this meeting, but she doubted Erik would have approved.

So now she decided to gamble. "Mr. President, I have . . . reports . . . that Col. Stryker did, indeed, mount an offensive against -"

"You'd do well not to listen to rumors, senator." The words weren't sharp - quite. "Stryker did a lot of things that damaged this country's reputation internationally, and left serious worry about their safety in the minds of its citizens. What concerns us now is how to make sure a loose canon like Stryker never gets federal funding again to operate a project like that one. Right now, we have the biggest intelligence snafu on our hands since the Iraqi War."

Still smarting over the president's refusal to confide in Kelly, Mystique said, "And we all know what happened to Bush, thanks to the war."

McKenna glared. "What's that supposed to mean, Bob?"

"Nothing hostile, sir. Merely an observation."

"Yes, well, I have two eyes and a brain of my own, thank you. If there's nothing else?"

Mystique recognized an invitation to leave when she heard it, and rose. "Thank you for seeing me, Mr. President." She offered Kelly's hand to shake, and after a moment, McKenna took it. The hesitation was noted. "If there's anything I can do, in the crisis . . . ."

"I'll keep it in mind. Enjoy the holidays, senator."

Mystique waited until she was in the men's room to curse.

* * *

"You said that you have information about William Stryker?"

"Yes." There was a faint movement of darker shadow inside shadow, but the speaker remained hidden in the recesses of the alleyway. That had been one of several conditions for this meeting, that his informant could remain entirely anonymous - a contingency Special Agent Larry Trask found a bit too Hollywood, like something out of the _X-Files_, and in his own mind, he'd dubbed the man "Deep Throat." That this codename was actually an historical reference to the chief informant during the Watergate scandal was something the young Mr. Trask neither knew nor would have cared about, had he known.

In fact, the man called himself "Strife" and claimed to be the sole remaining member of William Stryker's inner circle in Washington. "The information that's been released publicly is a cover-up," Strife said now. "The real cause behind the worldwide Blackout was a mutant - an incredibly powerful, telepathic mutant. The colonel was trying to put an end to the mutant problem, once and for all, but wound up dying for it. A martyr to the cause, you might say, along with most of his task force. The few who did make it out alive remember nothing. All except me."

To say that Trask was dubious of his source would have been an understatement, but he'd found enough clues during his own investigations to suggest that his original hunch had been true - there _was_ a cover-up of some type. More had happened at Alkali Lake than the shit the president's office was spewing, and Special Agent Larry Trask was going to get to the bottom of it. His father had died in that Blackout, and Larry wanted the head of the man who'd caused it. He didn't think that man was Stryker, whatever the president said.

"So - you have a name for this 'incredibly powerful' telepath?"

"Why? So you can arrest him? Tsk, tsk, Mr. Trask. No charges would stick. He is too well protected. Besides, I have a far better idea. We're going to enact Will's plan B."

"Plan B?"

"Colonel Stryker knew the value of multiple plans. I shan't give you the name of Stryker's adversary - not yet - but I shall give you another name, the name of one of Will's allies, a man outside the reach of the president and his toadies."

"I thought you said you were the only one who remembers what happened at Alkali Lake?"

"I am. But as the gentleman in question was not involved with that project, he was never _tampered with_."

There came a rustling in the shadows and the sound of a door opening, then another snick, and silence. Fluttering to the asphalt in the dim light of a Washington alleyway was a business card in white, red and black. Trask bent to pick it up. It advertised "The Hellfire Club," and written on the back was a name.

_Sebastian Shaw._

Trask tapped it against his palm. "Well, Mr. Shaw. Let's see what you know."

* * *

**Notes:** First, thanks to Artaxastra for answering several political questions. And yes, I know Hank was from Durfee, Illinois, but there _is_ no Durfee in Illinois. In _Special_, I made Durfee a suburb of Deerfield (itself a suburb of Chicago). Nowhere in the comics did it say Edna was a nurse, but she did have an eclectic background. As for the relative ages and arrival times of Kitty, Jubilee, and Rogue, since the film scrambled that previously, I felt free to make Jubilee the longest resident, even though, in the comics, she arrived after both Rogue and Kitty Pryde. As for Kelly's family, his wife in the comics was named Sharon, and in one of the hype shows before the original _X-Men_ release, Kelly is shown with a wife and daughter. Even in the comics, Raven is something of an enigma; I haven't followed comic canon for her, although Destiny does figure. Worthington Steel - or now, Worthington Industries - is a real, multi-billion-dollar company that specializes in diversified metal processing. On the informant, yes, I know the proper spelling is "Stryfe," but this is movieverse. Theresa Roarke = Theresa Cassidy; I followed Claremont's novelization with her name.

**A note on historical events and timing:** The first _X-Men_ film aired in 2000, and events there took place "in the near future." As a result, I dated most of my stories, including _Special_, so that X1 occurred in 2005. At the writing of this chapter, we were in the spring of 2005, but I decided to stay with that original timing, rather than try to re-date it. Thus, the president is McKenna, not Bush. We can assume that Bush was, indeed, elected in 2000, but was voted out of office in 2004, perhaps as a backlash to 9/11, the War in Iraq, and the "Mutant Problem." Obviously, in our world, the "Mutant Problem" never became a political issue. ; So their timeline diverged from ours c. 2004. Nonetheless, some post-2004 events, such as Hurricane Katrina, (and people currently in office) may be referred to.


	6. Serving Tea

"Mr. Worthington!" The commissioner for the Westchester County Department of Public Safety practically exploded out of his chair, offering a hand to Warren, who smiled wanly, politely, and took it.

"Commissioner Louis? Thank you for seeing me."

"It's my pleasure, Mr. Worthington. How can I help you?"

Warren slumped down into the slat-backed chair the commissioner indicated. "It's a small matter, and believe me, I'm well aware that police departments all over the country have been under strain these past few weeks. It's just . . . I wanted to see if you might have any more information on a certain case?"

The commissioner frowned, but not in a completely uncooperative way. Warren had long ago learned how to finesse matters. "What case?"

"Missing persons, for a Dr. Jean E. Grey. She disappeared during the Blackout. Her car ran off the road into the Hudson. The car was found, but no body. I just . . . I wondered if you might know any more? I'm an old friend of Dr. Grey's, and . . . ." He trailed off to rub at his eyes. "Her family - her fiancé . . . they're having a hard time. There's no body. As long as there's still no body . . . "

The commissioner shook his head and settled down on the edge of his desk. "I know. I've seen this before. Without that confirmation -"

Warren looked up. "Do you think there may still be hope? Have all the Jane Does . . . ?"

"I'll check. Stay here."

Warren nodded and then sat back to wait. He was here to do the necessary - nail the lid on Jean's coffin. He was in a unique position. Even a cursory look into his history would show ties both to Jean and to her family, but he was "just a friend," and hadn't even been in the country when she'd disappeared. He could thus play the role of "concerned-with-the-living." No one would be too suspicious if he came looking for information . . . and subtly suggested that some kind of closure be given if nothing was found (as it obviously couldn't be).

And if all this squeezed his heart in the process, well, the safety of the school (and the X-Men) demanded it. Scott sure couldn't do it, and for a multitude of reasons.

It wasn't long before the commissioner returned, his face duly serious as he delivered what he assumed to be the bad news. "I'm very sorry, but no. There've been no more leads in the case. The car was found in about ten feet of water, the doors shut but the driver's window open. The seatbelt wasn't fastened, so either she was able to unfasten it after the crash, or . . . ."

Warren rubbed at his eyes again. "She was on her way to a meeting. She always used to say that seatbelts wrinkled her suits."

The commissioner sighed. "I'm sorry. As we told the parents and fiancé, it's still possible that something could turn up - but after almost three weeks, well . . . . The river was dredged, and we have records of her fingerprints, but all the unidentified patients in the states of New York and Connecticut have been cross-checked. And the unidentified bodies, too."

Warren dropped his head, jaw clenching in a fair imitation of holding back something more volatile. "I think I knew - I mean, we all knew, by this point . . . ." He looked up again. "The family isn't sure what to do about a funeral. We don't want it to seem as if we've given up on Jean . . . ."

"Well, we can't _officially_ close the case until a body is found, but given the situation . . . I'm sorry," the commissioner said for a third time. "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Mr. Worthington. I wish I could give you something more positive, I really do."

Warren didn't reply for a moment, just stared out a window, then rose to offer the commissioner his hand. "No, I thank you for your honesty. We needed to know. I'll tell them what you've told me, but . . . it's not easy news."

"It never is. Again, I wish I could have had something happier, or at least more promising."

But Warren just nodded, holding his "distressed friend" face and letting the commissioner show him out. Back in the Mercedes he'd borrowed from the mansion garage, he let his head drop against the wheel and closed his eyes.

* * *

When at the mansion, Warren's retreat had always been the roof. Occasionally, in their younger years, Scott had followed him up there; but mostly, he had it to himself. Thus, when he lifted himself over the edge only to find someone else already there, he was a bit surprised - and just a tad irritated to have his sanctuary invaded, however irrational he knew the feeling to be.

Kurt Wagner looked up as he felt the wind from Warren's wings. As before in the dining hall, he raised a hand as if to hide himself, or ward off Warren, but then seemed to remember and lowered the hand, watching out of the corner of his eye as Warren settled beside him on the north gable. "I see I'm not the only one who escapes to the heights," Warren said as he crouched down, wings half extended for balance. The sun was warm on them despite the cool air of fall.

Wagner's smile was somewhere between shy and sly as he said, "Every roof should have its gargoyle."

"Or angel," Warren replied, refusing to resort to pity. "We make a matched set, don't you think?"

And Wagner laughed. On the lawn below, some of the kids were taking advantage of a nice day to play badminton while the gardener pruned hedges for the coming of winter. After a while, Warren said, "I've been to Munich a few times. Beautiful city."

Wagner nodded and smiled. "_Ja, und danke schön._"

"Did you grow up there?"

Wagner nodded, paused, then blurted out, "Were you born with the wings?"

Warren hid his surprise. "No. They . . . sprouted, I guess you could say, when I was sixteen. Hurt like hell. Took about three months to reach their full size." He glanced at Wagner. "Were you born blue?"

"_Ja." _A pause, then, "I saw you, earlier, arriving. You did not have the wings."

Warren snorted. "Oh, I had them. They were just hidden under my jacket. See, the rest of the world thinks I have a spinal deformity, but the wing bones grow such that I can fold them up and hide them under a coat or suit jacket. It's not comfortable, and it's not perfect, but they can be hidden."

Wagner was staring at him, or rather, at the enormous wings. "But they are so beautiful . . . "

"Not to my parents."

"Ah, yes." Wagner sighed. "Not to parents, _genau!_ Mine gave me away when I was born."

Warren couldn't say he was surprised, but still. "I'm sorry."

"Do not be. It was for the best. I was left with the Zigeuner, the Roma - you call us Gypsies - who raised me. They are not so afraid of difference."

"Wise people," Warren said. He didn't know much about the Rom. What little he did know came from European business partners who mostly regarded them as a source of cheap labor but a social nuisance. Europe's migrant workers. Then again, Warren doubted any of those partners would have taken in a small blue child with yellow eyes and a spade tail. "So how did you end up here?"

At this question, Wagner turned his head on the side and looked away in shame. "It is not to be discussed."

"Sorry. I didn't mean to pry."

"I promise you, I am no danger to anyone here."

"I'm sure you're not. If you were, the professor would never have let you stay." Reaching out, Warren clasped Wagner's shoulder, and if the blue man seemed surprised by the touch, he didn't flinch, as Warren had half-expected. "A lot of our students - and the adults for that matter - have things in their pasts they don't want to talk about. Don't worry about it."

Kurt smiled. It really was a charming smile, once one got past the teeth. "Would you like some coffee, Herr Worthington - real Romani coffee?"

"Please, call me Warren. And sure, if you're ready to go in, we can -" Warren had started to rise, but Kurt reached out to tug him back.

"No, wait here. I will be only a moment -" And he disappeared, just like he had the other morning in the dining hall. It left behind a faint sulfuric stink, like rotten eggs, and Warren wrinkled his nose, but the wind blew it away quickly and he glanced about. There was no evidence of Wagner, yet he'd said to wait, so Warren waited.

Only a few minutes later, that odd popping noise like a sucking of air announced Wagner's return. He was carrying two mugs of steaming coffee. One he handed over. "For you - Warren. And please, call me Kurt."

Smiling, Warren took the coffee. It looked as black as ink, and was hot. He sipped it, finding it strong and sweet, and not overcooked as the coffee too often was in the mansion. "This is good," he said, glancing up. "Thank you."

And Kurt gave that charming grin again, settling in with his own mug, his tail wrapped casually over the gable top. "You should try my Románo tcháyo - fruit tea."

"I'd like to," Warren said, smiling and sipping more of the sweet coffee. Then, abruptly, the smile fell off his face. What was he doing up here on the roof, chatting about tea and coffee with a blue Gypsy? Jean was dead, and that evening, he would have to talk to Scott about her funeral.

Kurt noticed his change of expression. "What is wrong?" he asked, not in a nosy way, but with genuine concern.

Warren hesitated, unsure how much he should share with the newcomer, but in the last few days, he'd gathered that Kurt was now a part of this place, taken in by Xavier just as all of them had been once. "This morning I went down to visit the county commissioner. Jean's disappearance is still an open case, but for a variety of reasons, we need to have it closed, informally if not formally. So I asked the right questions to get the answers needed so that the commissioner can put the case in the cold file box - which is the next best thing to closing it. Doing so will make holding a funeral for her a bit less suspicious." Warren took a deep breath. "Scott couldn't do it, or her family. It had to be Xavier or me. Since I was out of the country when the 'accident' occurred, it made more sense for it to be me."

Kurt was nodding. "It is good to have a funeral. Her soul must know that she is mourned and missed. Otherwise there will be more hauntings."

Warren leaned forward. "What do you mean?"

"I heard what happened in Herr Summers' room . . . ." Kurt turned his head slightly to the side; it seemed to be a peculiar gesture indicating discomfort or curiosity, then he shook his head and hissed through his teeth. "The broken mirror . . . her soul is unhappy, restless - jealous. If we do not show her proper mourning, it will go badly for us."

Ah, just superstition then. "The professor thinks Scott did the damage, Kurt." That got the other man's attention. "Scott's had . . . a hard life. Xavier thinks it might be a manifestation of post-traumatic stress disorder. Scott did the damage and then promptly suppressed the memory. Don't say as much to him, please, but it's the only explanation that makes much sense."

Kurt's smile was amused. "So the _gadje_ would explain it. Forgive me, Herr Worthington - Warren - but we believe that the soul does not end with the body. It remains. And if we, the living, seem to profit from the death, then the soul will become angry. We do not keep the belongings of the dead, and we do not speak their name. And we always, always give to them a grand funeral, so their soul can see how they are honored. But none of these things have been done for her. It is almost as if she has been forgotten. I know that is not true, but her soul must _see_ that it is not, or she will continue to haunt us."

Warren had to resist getting angry; Kurt didn't mean any disrespect. "I'm afraid our customs aren't the same as yours, and believe me, if there is such a thing as a soul and Jean's is still around, she'd have to see how much we -" He stopped, eyes filling and hands beginning to shake, his features twisting as he tried to keep from sobbing. Wagner reached out and took the cooling coffee mug from his fingers, then just sat beside him while he cried. "We miss her . . . I miss her . . . ."

"You were in love with her," Kurt said softly - and not judgmentally.

"We were all in love with each other," Warren replied. "It's complicated." Then he glanced at Kurt. "You're scandalized."

But Kurt only shook his head. "It is not for me to judge the hearts of others." He smiled very faintly. "Especially not when those hearts are broken with sorrow." He handed Warren back the mug so Warren could take a long drink. Then they sat together, drinking coffee in the sun, and Warren asked Kurt to tell him about life in the Munich Circus.

* * *

"Dinner is served." Warren pushed open the (recently repaired) door to Scott's suite, carrying a pair of plates.

Scott glanced up. "What is this?" Then he saw what was on the plates - salmon and asparagus - and let out a bark of laughter. "Friday night cuisine!"

"We had taste."

"We had money."

"That, too." Warren set down one of the plates on a portable tray in front of Scott. "I cooked."

"Edna let you in the kitchen?"

"I know my way around one, so she protested only a little."

Scott snorted in reply. In the week and a half since her arrival, Hank's mother had not only made the infirmary her own, she'd taken over the kitchen, too, appalled to find the mansion had no chef since Xavier's old family cook had retired five years ago. "I don't know how you all survived," she'd exclaimed.

And Warren did, in fact, know his way around a kitchen. When he'd first come to Xavier's, years ago, it had been Scott who'd taught him the finer points of washing-machine operation and how to run a vacuum cleaner, and Scott who'd first taught him the rudiments of cooking, as well. But the student had soon surpassed the teacher when it came to food, and during their time at Yale, the maid had cleaned the apartment and done Warren's wash - but Warren had cooked. Some might have called it an affectation, but Warren genuinely liked it. There was something soothing about it, something simple. One combined ingredients, added spices, and produced results. There was art involved, but not the knife-edge balance of astute risk investment versus conservative assessment of capital required for business. Warren managed the latter art well, too, but it was exhausting. At the end of a day with too many meetings, he could go hide in his kitchen and cook and forget for a little while that in the morning he would need to make decisions that might win or lose Worthington Industries millions, or billions. If a culinary experiment didn't work out, at most he had an inedible dinner.

But his mind was always working, and he'd made some of his best and shrewdest choices while in the kitchen, by thinking at them sideways rather than dwelling on them.

This evening, he'd been thinking about the problem of Scott and his assessment of Jean's death. Something about it didn't gel, even while something about it did. Warren wished he knew more of what had happened between Jean and Logan when Logan had returned. Key pieces of the puzzle were missing, and for all that Scott was a brilliant tactician, his assessment of human motives was sometimes faulty.

Now, though, Scott was focused on the salmon, and dug right in as if he were starving - which he might well have been. Warren wasn't sure when he'd last eaten. Flicking his wings to sit down by Scott on the sofa, Warren pulled up his own tray and began to eat as well. There was a nice Pinot Gris to go with the meal. They'd eaten a little before Scott asked, "You went to the police office today?"

"Yes."

"How'd it go?"

"We can plan her funeral."

Nodding, Scott took another bite of salmon as Warren stole a sideways glance in his direction, but Scott's expression was utterly blank. They may as well have been discussing the fish. Disturbed, Warren frowned down at his plate.

* * *

"He thinks she killed herself."

Xavier looked up from his desk to where Warren was leaning into the door jamb. It was far too early on a Saturday morning for most of the students (much less Scott) to be awake and about, but Xavier still gestured for him to come in and shut the door. "I know," the professor replied.

Pacing over to one of the office windows that overlooked the front garden, now dead or dying after the first frosts of November, Warren asked, "So did she? You were in her head at the end."

"No, Warren - she was in mine."

Surprised, Warren turned. "What - exactly - happened? You told me some, or showed me, I suppose, but I want to hear what you actually _think_ happened."

"I think Jean finally tapped into her full potential. She was always cautious, you remember, and when she went to medical school, she lost much of the ground she'd gained."

"She was always studying, or later, doing rounds."

"Yes. And by the time she came back here, her powers had atrophied considerably."

"But she had shields. And she never had any trouble bespeaking Scott or me."

"Her shields were necessary, and she had bonds already with you both. Her _skills_ mostly remained in place - it was her actual powers that were weakened. And she still resisted Cerebro. Or more properly, Scott resisted it for her."

"Scott's too damn protective."

"Indeed. And although it certainly caused a crisis at the time, I can't help but think my incapacitation during the Statue of Liberty incident was a blessing in disguise for her - and perhaps for Scott as well. It forced her to use Cerebro."

"Or gave her an excuse."

Xavier's answer to that was a faint smile, then he tilted his head slightly. "In fact, I wonder if using Cerebro may have unlocked something."

"A jump-start?"

"Of a sort. It was after, that her nightmares began, and the fact she was able to keep them from me is a testament to her growing strength."

Warren leaned his chin forward slightly in surprise. "You didn't know about them?"

"Not until after, no. Scott told me. But at the time, she didn't discuss them even with him. He knew about them because they woke him up, but he'd assumed she was talking to me - as I'm sure she intended. He only broached the subject with her on the very day of the attack on the president. Things spiraled from there."

Warren just shook his head. He was starting to wonder if he'd been the only one she'd been talking _to_ in her last few months - and perhaps that was because he hadn't been physically there. If he had been . . . .

"If wishes were horses, Warren . . . ."

He frowned. "You're reading my mind."

Xavier ignored the rebuke. "The 'what if' game is a natural response to grief, but if we follow it too far, it leads us only into unanswerable recriminations. If I had been less busy, I might have noticed Jean's growing distress. If Scott were less reserved by nature, he might have confronted her about her nightmares sooner. If you had been here, you might have seen us all avoiding the big pink elephant in the mansion. But none of that was the case, and blaming ourselves for it now won't bring her back."

"So he's right? Scott's right? She suicided?"

"No, I don't believe that she did, although as I said, I can't be entirely certain since, at the end, it was she who entered my mind to speak to Scott one last time. I didn't enter hers. Thus, I saw only what she let me see, and she was far more focused on him. What I can say is that I felt from her an . . . overwhelming confidence. She knew what she was doing, Warren."

"But what _was_ she doing? Scott has a point about the plane. If her powers _had_ suddenly trebled -"

"Make that closer to increased a hundredfold, or perhaps even a thousandfold. The power that she exhibited in those last moments was . . . staggering, quite honestly. I've always known that Jean harbored far more potential than she'd even begun to tap, but I would never have predicted anything like what I saw and experienced at Alkali Lake. I am the most powerful telepath on the planet - that's a fact, not a boast." Reaching out, Xavier touched his model globe resting in its oak stand, spinning it gently. "But Jean not only reached out to my mind, she _overwhelmed_ it. Scott seems to think I could have forced her to return to the plane. I couldn't." He looked back at Warren. "I was to Jean, at that moment, the same as she'd once been to me - like a child."

Even Scott's description of everything Jean had been telekinetically manipulating right before her death hadn't struck Warren as powerfully as that simple statement from Xavier, and his wings arched almost unconsciously. "Holy Christ." _What had she become? _But he didn't ask the question aloud; he was sure Xavier had already asked it of himself. "Adrenaline?" He was hoping for a less frightening explanation than the obvious.

"I do not know. Perhaps. But when she spoke through me, I felt as if . . . as if I'd been possessed." He looked up, his face stony serious. "I have not shared that with Scott. He has enough on his mind."

Warren sat down in one of the chairs - or more properly, sank down because his legs would no longer support him. "Charles, if she was really that powerful, there's no reason at all that she couldn't have survived. She could have . . . lifted herself, flown; she could have wrapped herself up in a cocoon when the water hit; she could have done anything."

Xavier simply nodded. "I think that is probably true. But you must remember - we are looking at all of this with 20-20 hindsight. Jean was not concerned with herself in those last minutes. If I can say anything for certain about her state of mind, it was desperate with fear for us, but also utterly determined. She had mere minutes - or less, really, when she finally tapped into her full potential - and she was concentrating on lifting the ship and running the engines, as well as on holding off the water. I very much doubt - in the crisis - she gave thought to what she _might_ do. She was too busy thinking about what she _had_ to do. You understand?

Warren nodded. He did. And it sounded just like Jean - impetuous, full of a fiery conviction, but not really thinking beyond the moment.

"She was not afraid, or not for herself," Xavier went on. "I do not believe that she elected to die when she might have lived, but that she honestly did not realize she had the option."

"Scott -"

"- is angry. And in pain. And all his insecurities have come back in full force. Furthermore, Scott has extensive experience at surviving crises that _Jean did not_. The way his mind works under pressure is quite different from the way hers did - or yours, or mine. That's why he commands the X-Men. The children sometimes call him 'fearless' in jest, but he is full of fear in his normal life. Yet in a crisis, he thinks more clearly than most - it's what makes him a survivor. Jean and Scott were good for one another because she knew what it meant to be normal, and he didn't; she taught him. Yet he knew how to be calm in the crunch, which she didn't. He was her strength."

Warren nodded. It was, in fact, why, all those years ago, he'd stepped aside gracefully, encouraging Jean to go after Scott. Jean knew "normal" better than Warren, who'd been an orphan in essence if not in fact. Jean had been able to give Scott what he needed in a way Warren never could have. (All of that had stood quite independent of Scott's issues regarding male attraction.)

But now, he said, "Scott told me he did think of how to save her, but she wouldn't listen to him."

Xavier sighed. "That is, to some degree, his own fault. And I say that not to blame, but as the truth he doesn't want to hear. He's always been so protective of her that she severed her ties to him before leaving the plane, so he wouldn't sense what she was contemplating, and he was too distracted to notice until she was already gone. That is why she used me to speak to him; she was afraid to open herself to him, afraid she might lose her resolve - and her concentration - under the assault of his own panic. He is, normally, an excellent commander."

"Except when it comes to Jean."

"Precisely."

Inexpressibly sad, Warren looked away. Jean had cut off the one person who might have been able to save her life because, while he'd trusted her with his weaknesses, he'd never quite trusted her with her own - and she'd let him wrap her in felt. And Warren hadn't been there to knock sense into either of them, if he'd even have had time. "So she really didn't commit suicide."

"Not beyond the choice of her life for ours - and I do believe she saw it in those terms. I wish that Scott could believe that, as well."

Nodding, Warren stood up and straightened his slacks. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

But even as he left, he still wasn't sure that he'd really reached the bottom of the matter.

It was later that same day that Warren took the professor's Bentley into the city to pick up Hank at JFK. He'd offered to take Edna, but she'd declined, saying she'd see Hank soon enough and, "You two boys need an hour or so to catch up." Meaning Warren could fill Hank in on Scott's precarious emotional state.

The zoo of JFK reminded Warren why he kept his own plane, and perhaps he should just have sent his pilot down to pick up Hank at Hartsfield, but at least they were able to coordinate via cell phone, and he was in and out of the central terminal drive as quickly as possible. With Hank and luggage in tow, they were back on the Van Wyck Expressway through Queens, headed north. Hank turned in his seat then and said, "All right, the low-down please. Between your emails and Mom's, I'm concerned."

So Warren told Hank everything that had happened since his arrival, almost three weeks earlier, up to and including his conversation with Xavier that morning. When he was done, Hank sat silently for a while and watched the passing scenery. They were leaving the Bronx, crossing over into Westchester County. It had taken that long for Warren to relate the recent news. "Your leaves are all done, I see," Hank said while he watched out one of the windows. "Ours are at their height. I was just up in Rabin's Gap last weekend, to see the fall colors, and bought boiled peanuts for Scott."

Warren shook his head. "What do boiled peanuts have to do with anything?"

"Why, nothing at all."

"You're the non-sequitur king, Hank."

"I have nothing in particular to offer on the situation, although I am inclined to agree with the professor. Jean and I were not in regular correspondence, these last years, but we did talk at least semi-regularly. Nothing she said to me would have indicated a level of distress, depression, or anxiety that might lead her to choose death when she could've lived. Yet I can see Jean choosing to sacrifice herself for others. There was always a part of her that felt . . . inadequate, I think."

Warren glanced over, curious because he'd sometimes caught a sense of the same thing. "What do you mean?"

"She measured herself against those around her and found herself wanting. So many had survived horrors she hadn't - Scott not least - that she felt guilty, I think. She wanted to make it better for them, but worried that she wasn't as . . . 'authentic,' I suppose. She didn't feel like an authentic mutant because she hadn't suffered rejection and prejudice for her mutancy. I have always wondered if that may not be one reason behind her zealous championing of the mutant rights cause? Yet even that she did _publicly_ as a 'mutant researcher' not a mutant, and if anyone wondered at her interest, they didn't need to look any further than her fiancé."

Warren frowned; Jean had never admitted any of these doubts to him. "She told you this?"

"Oh, not directly. But from the occasional Freudian slip, I put it together. Jean said once, 'Scott and Ro go pull kids out of all kinds of terrible situations, but I just sequence their DNA.'"

"Jean was the one who went before the Joint Session," Warren pointed out. "That could've been career suicide."

"But not _actual_ suicide," Hank replied. "I suspect Jean wanted, more than anything else, to believe that her contribution really mattered. Like many children of privilege, she felt guilty."

Angered by that, Warren protested, "Of course she mattered!"

"To us. Yet she doubted herself. Jean was always everyone's cheerleader except her own."

And Warren found he couldn't argue with that.

* * *

John and Elaine Grey drove down to Westchester to help plan Jean's memorial service. Xavier had told them both a modified version of the truth, leaving out such details as the Brotherhood's involvement. "I didn't want them to think their daughter's death just an accident. I wanted them to know she was a hero." But the expressions on their faces, when Warren received them in the grand entry, were neither thankful nor friendly.

"Warren," Dr. Grey said, offering his hand to shake while remaining stiff-faced and formal. It wasn't the most auspicious of beginnings, although Warren wasn't sure what else he'd expected. They'd lost their daughter.

The meeting itself was to be small - only Jean's parents, Xavier, Scott, Warren and Hank. Even Ororo wasn't there, but Warren was especially relieved that Logan hadn't been included, though he'd caught a snippet of angry confrontation between Logan and Scott earlier in the gym:

"You have no _right_ to be there, Wolverine."

"I loved her, too."

"No, you didn't. You didn't _know_ her enough to love her."

"Scott?" Warren had interrupted before things could get ugly. "I need you."

Scott had kept up the staring contest with Logan a moment more before turning to follow Warren. "Still putting out fires," Scott had said casually when they were out of earshot.

"You're like a pit bull sometimes."

"He doesn't belong there."

"I didn't say he did."

"He started it."

"Scott, that sounds like one of your students."

Yet Warren couldn't blame Scott for his resentment, and thought Logan's exclusion wise. This meeting was bound to be uncomfortable, and Scott's indiplomacy would be enough to handle without adding the Wolverine to the mix.

It wasn't that Scott didn't get along with Jean's parents. In fact, he did; but he'd never been entirely comfortable with them. Their academic, upper-class manners had made him feel inadequate, and Jean - respecting Scott's wishes - had never told them all about his background, so they'd been unable to understand the standoffish nature of their future son-in-law. Thus, while they'd gotten along, it had never been a particularly _warm_ relationship. If anything, Warren got along with them better, and Elaine had once remarked to him in casual passing, "It's too bad it didn't work out for you and Jean." Warren didn't think she'd intended it as a deliberate slight to Scott, yet it did point to a certain distance between the Greys and their daughter's fiancé. (The fact Scott had never formally married Jean hadn't helped.)

Now, as Scott entered the professor's office, their greeting for him was even more reserved than it had been for Warren, and he and the Greys sat on the opposite sides of the little circle of chairs Xavier had set up in front of his desk. On one side of Xavier were John and Elaine, then Hank across from him, with Scott and Warren on the other.

"Let's get started," Xavier said. "Scott has with him a letter outlining Jean's own final wishes. I faxed or gave everyone a copy of this earlier. Jean stressed a small memorial with donations to various charities rather than flowers, but under the circumstances, we may need to have two memorials, one for those aware of the true nature of her death, and one for those who aren't."

"Charles," John Grey interrupted, "I know we've been over this before, but I simply must bring it up again. What was our daughter doing on a vigilante excursion to Canada?"

"Saving us."

That had come - a bit unexpectedly - from Scott. Warren had thought Scott too angry to defend her, but his feelings must have been more ambivalent than he was letting on. "The professor and I," Scott went on, "and Ro and a dozen others - we wouldn't be here today except for Jean."

"I know that," John Grey snapped back. "But what I want to know is what she was doing up there in the _first_ place?"

"Gentlemen, please," Xavier interceded smoothly. "We all knew an attack on the mansion was a possibility as mutant hysteria rose. John, you saw two years ago the blueprints for the escape tunnels I had constructed. This wasn't entirely unexpected, even if we didn't anticipate paramilitary. Most of our students got away to a concealed shelter, but the adults remaining went after those who'd been kidnaped, fearing they were in mortal danger." As had been Xavier and Scott themselves, but the professor didn't remind the Greys of that.

"Why couldn't it have been left to authorities who _specialize_ in hostage situations?" John asked.

"Because we weren't sure to what degree the authorities were directly involved - may even have been responsible. Ororo and Jean believed they had the best chance for a rapid penetration and retrieval."

"Which left one _dead_, and might have resulted in all of you dying," John countered. "You doubt the professionals, but I have to wonder if they couldn't have managed a rescue without losing anyone in the process - especially untrained civilians!"

It was a harsh critique, but fair enough from John's perspective. John and Elaine didn't know about the X-Men, and the Danger Room training that went with it. Jean had been unwilling to tell them, knowing they would have protested her involvement, however partial and periodic.

"Jean was our physician," Xavier said now, "and she and Ororo had no idea in what shape the children might be. I know you believe we should have left it to the authorities, but I can only reiterate what I've told you now several times. We didn't trust the authorities to handle the matter. Recall that Scott and I were both abducted from a federal maximum-security prison."

John shifted, uncomfortable, but Elaine said, "You make it sound as if there were a government plot against mutants, Charles."

"I'm not sure there wasn't. The president is, now, disavowing knowledge, but I've been told that he originally authorized the strike against the mansion. He simply didn't know how far Stryker planned to take it, or what Stryker's ultimate plans were."

Both the Greys shared a glance. "Charles, this is America. Things like that -"

"- don't happen in America?" Scott interrupted, tone sarcastic. He'd been sitting, tense, beside Warren all through the professor's polite debate, and was spoiling for a fight. "Oh yes, they do. The government can get away with murder because its citizens don't want to believe they will."

"Scott," Xavier and Hank said together even as Elaine replied, "Isn't that rather harsh?"

"Only if it's untrue. Look at the news that's come out about torture of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. This house - a _school_, dammit - was _attacked_ by a black ops group funded by the U.S. government. Fear of terrorism covers a multitude of sins. Or now, fear of mutants."

"Well, you have to admit, men like Erik Lehnsherr frighten the average citizen."

"And the average mutant," Hank slipped in - cutting off Scott - as he laid a hand on Elaine's shoulder. "I understand your fears, but believe me, those fears are shared by many mutants, as well. The same problems arise with Muslim terrorists. Just because some Muslims are terrorists, it doesn't follow that all Muslims are, yet it becomes easy to view all Muslims with doubt and hostility due to the actions of a radical minority. Even if one understands the doubt, that doesn't necessarily help relations between the two groups - relations that might, otherwise, go a fair way towards undermining the very tensions that terrorists of any stripe use in order to recruit new members. It's a nasty cycle. Fear breeds hate, and hate breeds violence, which just breeds more fear. Those of us who can be reasonable and refuse to submit to the fear must do our best _not_ to fall into that trap. There are mutants who work _against_ the activities of Erik Lehnsherr. Jean was among them by promoting education that fostered understanding."

"But that shouldn't have cost her her _life_," John said, still resentful. "She was a researcher, not a policewoman."

"She was a civil rights activist, John. Martin Luther King began as a Baptist minister, yet his convictions catapulted him to the forefront of the civil rights movement. Jean was a researcher, yes, but she was also a woman of strong convictions about the rights of mutants."

John, however, persisted. "She wasn't shot by an anti-mutant protestor. She died escaping a paranoid _lunatic_ who should've been left to the authorities. The plain truth is that you and your teachers had no business being up there in the first place."

"_We_ didn't have any say about being up there - !" Scott began.

Xavier held up a restraining hand. "We'll have to disagree on that. You remain convinced that the authorities could have handled the problem, while I remain convinced they not only couldn't, but - more importantly - _wouldn't_. Jean thought the same; that's why she was there."

"Elaine and I think you misled her to her own death."

"Jean was 33 years old!" Scott snapped, unable to hold his tongue. "She wasn't a teenager! And the professor didn't _mislead_ her at all - "

"Scott," Elaine interrupted in that soothing mother tone, "all of you depended so much on Dr. Xavier's guidance - "

"_He didn't make the goddamn decision! _Don't you get it? _We weren't here. _Jean and Ro were in charge. They came after us. If you want to blame someone for Jean being up there, blame _Jean_!"

That halted conversation cold and Warren watched both Greys visibly withdraw into themselves, refusing to look at Scott - or anyone else. Xavier appeared annoyed but, interestingly, didn't intervene. He'd been playing the diplomat, tacitly accepting the blame so Jean's parents could grieve for their daughter without being angry at her, too. Yet Scott - already angry - was disinclined to offer them that courtesy.

Finally, John looked up at Scott and asked bluntly, "So you agree she didn't belong up there?" If Scott wasn't going to let him escape the truth, he wasn't going to let Scott escape a judgment.

But Scott only snorted. "What else should she and Ro have done? If you think the government's after you, you don't call them up and ask for their help."

"It's not 'us against them,'" Elaine scolded, albeit gently. "Law enforcement groups have different jurisdictions - not to mention two different _countries_ were involved. Just because one group may be corrupt, it doesn't mean all of them are. You're too suspicious, Scott."

Scott glared, jaw working. Finally, he said, "Fine, you trust them with your safety. I'll trust my own wits. The law isn't about justice; it's about the law, and half my life, I've been screwed over by the law. If I'm suspicious, I think I have damn good reason." He turned to John then and went on, "What I didn't _agree_ with was Jean's choice to leave the plane. I think she could've done what she did from inside. She obviously didn't think so. In the end, it was her choice. I was her partner, not her parent. She's a grownup. I couldn't stop her - I _wouldn't_ stop her . . . ."

Sorrow abruptly overwhelmed his anger, choking him. He brought up the back of his hand to his mouth, but no one interrupted now. Finally, he managed, "I wouldn't have stopped her, even if it cost . . . cost me her."

He rose abruptly, almost knocking over his chair in his haste to leave, and alarmed, Warren started to bolt after but Xavier said quietly, "No, let him have a few minutes."

Xavier turned then to the Greys, who seemed equal parts shocked, concerned, and irritated. "He did try to stop her," Xavier told them quietly. "She didn't permit it because she feared the alternative would cost all our lives. Scott is still working through the fact he failed to save her, and he's angry at himself as much as at anyone else. But he does have a point - Jean was an adult. Whether or not we agree with her choices, they were hers to make, and we take away her dignity, and her heroism, if we deny her the right to have chosen what she believed a necessary sacrifice. Jean laid down her life so that others could live, especially the children placed under her care. That same devotion to the preservation of life is what first sent her into medicine. She was, to the end, a servant. I honor that, and I want her memorial to honor that."

John Grey bowed his head, while Elaine put an arm around him, her face pressed against his shoulder. Hank was teary-eyed, as well. "She was my little girl, Charles," John said, voice rough. "She was my little girl. Parents aren't supposed to bury their children."

"I know," Xavier said softly, nodding to Warren and gesturing to the silver tea service on the lowboy. Warren rose to pour. It gave everyone time to gather their composure, but Warren wondered at the steadiness of his own hand on the pot and cups - and why Jean's death still felt so distant to him most of the time. To be sure, there were moments of piercing pain, but more often, he felt detached. Perhaps it was only because they couldn't all break down at once.

Someone had to serve the tea.


	7. Personal Journal: Facing It

_**From Scott Summers' Personal Journal:  
**__**Several entries, early November**_

I can't deal with it. I wasn't made for this.

How many times do I have to lose someone?

* * *

I said I wouldn't let anything happen to her.

* * *

I still don't understand why she kept me in the plane. Didn't she know I wasn't strong enough to live without her? I need her so badly, but she wasn't going to stay with me anyway.

I hate her. I fucking _hate_ her. But I don't know if I hate her more because she was going to leave me, or because she did.

* * *

I couldn't get out of bed today. Just the idea of putting my feet over the edge exhausted me, so I rolled over and went back to sleep. Warren finally came looking for me when I didn't show up to my first class, but I couldn't do anything all morning except sleep - or really, just lie there. Hank pinch hit for me. I finally got up about 3pm, and Warren made me eat cereal. I told him I want to die. Now he won't leave the suite. Sometimes I love him, sometimes I wish he'd go to hell.

* * *

I did manage to get out of bed today. Wasn't able to do much else, but I got out of bed. I'm not sure why this is hitting me now, almost a month later. I was more functional right after she died. Now, I live in a mental fog. I can't seem to think, but I also can't really sleep. I have no energy. This is probably depression, but I find it hard to care.

* * *

Her memorials are tomorrow - the public one for colleagues early in the afternoon, and the private one at the mansion tomorrow evening. They expect me to show up, but I won't make it through them. I'll break down again, like I did on the plane. They all think I'm walking the edge as it is. The professor suggested, a couple days ago, that I call up Jon Bennett and schedule an appointment. It's been six _years_ since I did therapy, but now he thinks I need to go back?

I know he thinks I tore up my own room. I didn't.

I'm not going crazy. And I can't afford to break down again in front of everyone. I went to pieces up in Canada, and commanders aren't supposed to go to pieces in a crisis. But I did.

Funny. I've lost my whole family, but the only funeral I've ever been to is my grandmother's. After my parents died, I was in a coma, so I never saw them buried. My brother didn't die, but he was adopted while I was still in the coma, so we never had the chance to say goodbye. He may as well have died.

But my grandmother died of cirrhosis only five years ago; all that alcohol finally pickled her liver. It's a miracle it didn't happen sooner, but I'm glad I got the chance to know her, even if it was just a short while. By the time she died, it was time, I guess. She wasn't afraid. She was tired, and she'd told me, some months before, not to be sad. I'm not sure I was, either. I missed what she represented more than I missed her; we hadn't seen enough of each other on a regular basis for me to miss her, and I felt a bit guilty for that.

All her family showed up for the funeral (and that's a lot of family). They had a church service, then a party, and talked a lot about her - told me stories I hadn't heard (and some I had). I'd assumed I was losing my last family member, but they reminded me otherwise. They still send me Christmas cards, and email, and periodically poke me about coming up to visit, but I haven't been in a couple years. Maybe I'll go this summer. I still have family - a lot of family - uncles, aunts, cousins, and honorary membership in the Dakl'aweidi clan of the Eagle band of the Haida-Tlingit of Juneau, Alaska.

But it was different, then. I might have lost my grandmother, but I still had family, and I still had _Jean_.

I'm not going to get through tomorrow.


	8. Personal Journal: In Memorium

_**From Scott Summers' Personal Journal:  
**_

I dressed in black.

Of course, one's supposed to wear black to a funeral, but that's not why I wore it. I'm color-blind, and once, only black or grey could be found in my closet - it's hard to mix-and-miss with black. Jean gave me cerulean and emerald, plum and saffron, alabaster and tangerine. She gave me brightness. She gave me _color_. My heart saw it, even if my eyes couldn't.

_In your light I learn how to love.  
In your beauty, how to make poems.  
You dance inside my chest, where no one sees you,  
but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art._

My world is back to black and red now. Black for grief. Red for rage. I'm blind and colorless, bowed by the weight of my sorrow.

_Miserere mei, Deus ...  
Amplius lava me ab iniquitate mea  
Et a peccato meo munda me._

They sang the _Miserere_ at her memorial. It killed me.

I'd expected the private wake at the mansion that evening to be the hardest to get through. The formal memorial was held in an Episcopal chapel in Annandale-on-Hudson and had been designed for public consumption: her colleagues, some old med-school friends, her extended family, a few politicos. I showed up with the others from Xavier's, steeled to bull my way through. Warren and I had been invited to sit with the Greys in the front pew. John Grey had called me the day after that awful meeting in Xavier's office, to apologize for his hostility. And I'd apologized for mine, as well. I don't want to alienate them. They're all of Jean I've got left, and maybe I'm their link to her, too. When I showed up today, Elaine introduced me to any family I hadn't already met as "my son-in-law, or as close as makes no difference." I hadn't expected that, and was genuinely touched.

Elaine doesn't like it that I never married Jean. In fact, she'd hinted with increasing ferocity that a wedding was long overdue until, four years ago, I'd been home with Jean for Thanksgiving dinner and John had collared me outside on the patio to ask bluntly if I ever planned to marry his daughter? I'd looked him right in the eye (or as much as I could), and replied, "I don't know. But I'll never marry anyone else - and I'll never cheat on Jean. For richer or poor, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, I belong to her."

"Why can't you say those words in a church?" he'd asked, as much confused as angry.

I'd shrugged, and told him, "It's not because I don't love her. I love her more than my own life."

I hadn't been lying, but it had also been what a father wanted to hear. "People talk," he'd said, almost helplessly.

"Let them," I'd replied. I knew he didn't understand - but he was trying, in his own way. "They'll stop when they see I'm not going anywhere. And I'm not."

John never asked me about it again, and as I'd predicted, after nine years, we'd ceased to be a scandal and become just eccentric. Most people who knew us assumed we'd never walk down the aisle, and they were probably right. "He's not _technically_ her husband, but . . . ." I'd wanted to live with Jean forever. But I'd not wanted to be put on display, and that's what a wedding would have been. She'd asked me once if maybe we shouldn't just sneak off to the JP and get it over. I'd refused. "I'm not ashamed. When I marry you, I'll do it in front of God and everyone."

"I'm not ashamed either! I just . . . want to get married. It'd make taxes easier." She'd been trying to joke, but I'd known taxes had nothing to do with it. More likely, it had been questions from friends or family about why she stuck with a high-school math teacher who wouldn't marry her. "You're not Tammy Wynette," I'd overheard one say at a Christmas party some years back. "Don't hand me this 'stand by your man' bullshit. There are a dozen guys out there who'd marry you as fast as they could get you to the chapel. Why let some pretty boy with an inferiority complex make you beg? He's not worth it."

I don't know what Jean replied. I'd headed off in another direction. Maybe that sounds hard to believe, but I don't think I wanted to know. She'd left with me that evening, and I took that for her answer.

At the school, I may be Cyclops. But outside it, I'm Mr. I'm-with-Doctor-Grey, and that's all right. Most of the time. I don't have an inferiority complex about that. Yet I can't explain why I resisted both a public ceremony and a private solemnizing, except that I'm stubborn. I wasn't going to marry her unless I married her for everyone to see, but whenever I thought about the three-ring circus a wedding would be, I froze up. Another time, she offered to plan the whole thing and all I'd have to do would be to show up on the appointed day in a tux. I rejected that, too; if I were to marry, then dammit, I wanted to be involved. I wouldn't show up to a ceremony I'd had no hand in. It was more of the stubbornness that had locked me in a cage of my own devising, yet I didn't know how to get out of it and I'd thought Jean finally reconciled to the fact she had me for the rest of our natural lives, if not a wedding cake, too.

But maybe not. And today, I'm a widower in truth, if not in fact. Unfortunately, undocumented truth doesn't count in court. It never did, which I know all too well, and I finally understand the value of a marriage license. I'm part of this memorial only because the Greys have allowed me to be - wanted me to be. I'm not Jean's husband, and I have no legal right over Jean's disposition and property. She never made a formal will, so it falls to her parents by default. They're leaving it to me by choice.

And I'm grateful, even while I know it's charity. Again. Half my life has been built on the charity of others, and I'm tired of it.

So when the first pure notes drifted from the choir loft above - the haunting High-C descant soaring above the combined voices in Gregorio Allegri's _Miserere_ - I turned in shock to look up behind me at the figures in the loft. The pitch and precision (not to mention the difficulty of the piece) were far superior to what one might expect from a standard church choir. And to know to sing _that_ composition . . . .

Colleen Wing had gathered twelve Redhot-and-Blue alumni - my old _a capella_ group at Yale - to sing for me. Not for Jean - for me. Colleen knew I loved that song. Xavier had first given it to me on CD during Hell Summer, my eighteenth year. Over and over, I'd listened to it, flat on my back on my bed, arms spread out in a cruciform. It had both expressed my sadness and drained it, cleansing me, the rise and fall of voices granting me forgiveness, redemption. Ever after, whenever my heart had broken, I'd dug out that CD to listen again. Other kids my age had pop music. I had the _Miserere_.

I don't know how much time Colleen and the rest must have spent, driving to and fro to prepare that piece inside a week, but they managed - a gift to the living. Not charity, not oh-by-the-way inclusion, not the incidental. It was for _me_.

It broke me, and healed me, too. I bowed my head and shut my eyes, letting the harmonies fall on me and bring tears. When it was over, I felt light, but strong enough to handle the rest of the day.

Well, so I thought until we got back to the mansion.

* * *

**Note:** The poem comes from _The Essential Rumi_, trans. Coleman Barks with John Moyne, 1995. The Latin comes from Gregorio Allegri's _Miserere_ and translates: "Have mercy on me, O Lord ... Wash me from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin." The piece is stunning. Scott was established as liking specifically Baroque and Renaissance music in _Special. _**  
**


	9. Haunted

Logan hated suits. In fact, he'd almost bowed out of the public memorial because he hated suits - and because he didn't feel that he belonged there. He'd never been part of Jean's _public_ life.

By contrast, Summers was sitting up front with the family, acting like the bereaved husband, and Logan resented that even while he had to acknowledge the kid's right. Logan had met Jean during one crisis and returned during another, all less than two months apart. In total, they'd spent maybe a week in one another's company, and whatever he'd said to her about being the good guy, it had been as much a defense of his pride as a serious pledge. Had he really thought he could fit himself into her normal world?

But God knew, he'd loved that woman. Of course, Summers didn't believe Logan capable of love, but what did the kid know? With his pretty manners and fine education and handsome face, Summers was all flash and no substance- - like this memorial - so it was fitting he was up there for public consumption while Logan sat in the back with the older kids. Ro and Xavier were watching the younger ones, and the new doctor and his mum were sitting with yet another group on the other side of the aisle. "Pretty upscale shebang," Logan muttered under his breath, after they were inside and seated.

"The Greys are important in Annandale," Drake whispered back. "Dr. Grey's father teaches at Bard, and I think that's the college president there." He pointed surreptitiously to a well-dressed older man and his wife. "There are a bunch of college people here, plus a couple senators, including Ted Kennedy." He pointed in another direction, and Logan just blinked.

Jean had known Teddy Kennedy well enough for him to attend her memorial service?

Holy Jesus.

"She born with a silver spoon in her mouth like Xavier?" Logan asked.

"Not rich, no. But pretty well off, yeah."

"So she's got a senator or three, a college president, and a mutant billionaire at her funeral." Logan brooded over that. Drake didn't reply. On Drake's other side, Marie was looking overwhelmed and Logan reached across to pat her knee, shooting her a tight smile.

The memorial itself was long and annoying and didn't have a lot to do with Jean, from Logan's point of view. He was glad when it was over, although that meant "mingling" for a bit until the professor signaled that they could return to the mansion. Logan escaped outside for a smoke, finding - to his utter astonishment - Summers engaged in the same, standing under a leafless maple tree off to one side of the church porch. Sauntering over with a cigar between his teeth, Logan asked, "Jean knew you snuck a few?" by way of greeting.

Summers just glared and took another pull from his cigarette - Camel Turkish Blend, if Logan wasn't mistaken, then they stood in awkward silence until Worthington exited the door, looking for Summers, and headed over. "I thought I might find you out here," he said, nodding cautiously to Logan.

A young woman had followed Worthington - a pretty little thing of Japanese extraction, and Logan assumed she was with Worthington until she slid an arm around Summers with easy familiarity and he didn't pull away, even hugged her back with his free hand. "Thank you," he said and Logan wondered what he was thanking her for.

"You're welcome," she said, smiling up at him with fond adoration.

And Logan blinked, comprehension dawning. She wasn't with Worthington. She'd come for Summers, and Jeannie must not have been the only one checking out greener pastures. In fact, maybe this was _why_ she'd been checking out greener pastures, and Logan felt a slow burn start in his belly. The little piss-assed twerp . . . . "Who's this?" he asked brusquely, and Summers turned his head with unhurried insolence. Afternoon sun sketched hollows under his sculpted cheekbones. He looked like an Abercrombie-and-Fitch model in that fine suit.

"Logan, let me introduce you to Colleen Wing. Colleen and I went to college together - sang in the same _a capella_ group. They performed today at the beginning."

"Oh." That interminable classical piece, Logan supposed.

"Colleen, this is Logan. He . . . helps out at the school."

"Doin' repairs," Logan clarified.

The girl was either shameless or dim, and held out a hand to him with genuine warmth. "It's nice to make your acquaintance, Logan."

He started to take the hand, but something in the shadows of his mind clicked and he bowed instead, saying, "_Konnichi wa. Hajimemashite_."

For three beats, there was complete silence - Logan just as astonished as the rest. But then the girl folded her hands formally, too, and lowered her eyes, bowing back and replying in kind, "_Dozo yoroshiku onegai ishimasu." _And he understood her. "When were you in Japan?" she asked, in English.

"Uh - don't remember." Both her eyebrows shot up, and behind her, Worthington and Summers were exchanging a glance. "I have a memory problem," he explained. "I was in an accident and lost some things."

"Oh - that's terrible. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to remind -"

"Don't sweat it, darlin'. But I can't say if I ever _was_ in Japan, or how I know the language. I didn't know until just now that I did. Sometimes . . . things just come back to me."

"Well, if it helps any, I can tell you that's Nagoya-ben. Normally, it's not very different from Tokyo-ben, but I haven't heard an accent that distinct in years."

"Nagoya-ben?" Something familiar was turning over in the back of his brain.

"The dialect spoken around the city of Nagoya on the main island."

"Nagoya," he muttered to himself, storing that away to pursue later. "Thanks."

"You're welcome."

Conversation faltered, yet he wasn't about to let this chance escape, and for more reasons than just because she might be able to give him clues about his past. "So you went to college with Summers, eh? You two date?"

Summers' jaw was tensing, but the girl spoke before he could. "Scott's been a good friend for a long time, but he's loved Jean since I've known him." Reaching, she caught Summers' hand to squeeze, and Logan began to doubt his original assumption. The grip wasn't a lover's, even covertly. She was attracted, no doubt, but in a subdued way - dulled by time perhaps - and there was nothing sexual in Summer's scent or body language.

"Was he a dork then, too?" Logan asked.

Startled, she laughed - probably assuming he was kidding - then glanced back at Summers with that same fond smile. Yet it had a twinkle; she wasn't in awe of him. "Scott's not a dork, he just pretends to be." Her cheeks dimpled.

"Col -"

She ignored him. "He's got a lot of hidden talents. Get him to sing sometime. His voice is beautiful."

"_Col-_"

"It is. Though it won't be if you keep that up." She pointed to the still burning cigarette in his other hand. It was clearly an old quarrel because he took a defiant drag, then dropped the butt on the grass and ground it out.

"Started smoking in college to look all grown up?" Logan asked.

"I started smoking in eighth grade, Logan. I've been trying to _quit_ for the past ten years."

"Not very hard," both the girl and Worthington said together.

And that definitely wasn't the answer Logan had expected, but if there were more to that tale, he wouldn't learn it today. Worthington had stepped forward to say, "Scott, we should go back in," and Summers nodded, letting Winged Boy and his Japanese friend lead him off, one on either side of him. Logan watched them go with narrowed eyes. This wasn't the first time Winged Boy had run interference between Logan and Summers, and Logan wondered why One Eye needed a babysitter (or a guard dog, Logan hadn't decided which yet).

* * *

Arthur Maddicks - Artie to his friends - had sat through Dr. Grey's funeral, arms clasped about himself, silently sobbing. The silence, however, didn't stem from a desire to conceal his grief.

Artie hadn't spoken a word for ten months. He _couldn't_ speak. His mutation had gifted him with a snake's tongue, and a snake's ability to taste the air with it. That complicated olfactory organ increased his sense of smell many times over - though he often found it easier to keep his mouth _shut_, as he didn't necessarily want a headache from overwhelming odors (like Kitty Pryde's perfume). His tongue, however, was only the most outwardly visible change, and while it would have made speech difficult, it wouldn't have prevented him from vocalizing entirely. Artie couldn't talk because he lacked a voice box; having one would keep his throat from expanding as required in order for him to swallow his food. In addition, his jaw unhinged, his molars had fallen out, and his upper incisors had become a pair of viper-style fangs that lay flat in his mouth until he opened wide enough to extend them. His venom could kill a man in under a minute.

But he'd never used it on a person, not even one of Stryker's goons. Of course, he'd been shot with a tranquilizer dart in his sleep, but there had been a few opportunities, when he'd come to at Alkali Lake. After returning to Westchester, Terry Roarke (daughter of an IRA operative) had inquired why he hadn't just bitten someone, and he'd stared back in horror, then shaken his head. Artie had no interest in killing. In fact, he couldn't kill his own food, though his mutation had designed him to. He preferred to eat raw, precut chicken parts, eggs, or fish fillets, which he swallowed whole, later regurgitating the bones into little plastic baggies that he deposited in the trash. He never ate with his friends because only a handful of people weren't disgusted when he fed. One of those few had been Dr. Grey. She'd used to keep a carton of eggs in the lab fridge for him to snack on when he came down to work because, "Growing boys have bottomless stomachs." She hadn't turned away, either, when he'd pop a Grade-A large brown egg into his mouth and swallow it in one gulp. Instead, she'd say, "Mr. Summers does the same thing with doughnuts," or - more seriously - "It's how you were meant to be, Artie. Don't be ashamed. You have a far more efficient digestive track than the rest of us."

Well, his digestive track might be more efficient, but otherwise, his mutation was enormously inconvenient. His mother had said that it must be Mother Nature's idea of a joke, because - until he'd manifested - he hadn't _shut up_ from the day he'd said his first word.

Once upon a time, Artie had loved to talk - about anything and everything, and if people hadn't answered, he'd repeated himself until they had. Thus, for such a verbal boy, to find himself bereft of words had been devastating. Fortunately, after Mother Nature had enjoyed her joke, she'd stepped forward again, and Artie Maddicks had been among the few mutants to manifest a secondary mutation. In his case, visual psionics. He couldn't talk anymore, but his mind could place an image directly into the minds of others.

Telepathy was a strange thing, Dr. Grey had explained, and came in different forms. Artie's was entirely visual, and if this worked well enough for practical matters, it had limited use for theoretical conversation. He might have taken sign language classes at the local community college, but Artie - child of the Communication Age - found other means to get around his muteness. Messaging systems became his lifeline, and groups that included Artie usually involved communication by cell phone text messaging or PDAs. He carried on extended IM conversations with Terry while they sat side-by-side in the computer lab.

But if messaging were a godsend, it still wasn't as easy as talking had been, and at times, he grew frustrated and lonely, and even the charming (and feisty) Miss Roarke couldn't make him feel less isolated. Only two people at the mansion had been able to converse freely with him: the professor, and Dr. Grey. The professor, of course, had numerous responsibilities that kept him busy, not to mention that (to Artie's mind) he was _old_.

Dr. Grey had been another matter, and Artie had soon attached himself to her, asking that his assigned duty area be assisting her in the lab - washing equipment, filing papers, cleaning tables . . . whatever she'd needed to have done. And while he'd worked, they'd talked telepathically. She'd fondly called him her silent chatterbox.

So at Alkali Lake, when he'd realized what was going to happen - that she'd left the plane to stop the water and would die for it - he'd panicked, albeit a good deal more silently than Cyclops. But what could a barefoot thirteen-year-old boy have done?

After, he'd been devastated, and hadn't spoken since, even psionically.

"Artie?" It was Miss Munroe, her fingers light on his shoulder, leaning over so she could see into his face. Her own was apologetic. "Are you ready to go?"

Blinking, he looked up at her. If he left, wouldn't that be conceding it was really over? Dr. Grey was gone. But what else could he do? Nodding, he rose to his feet and shuffled out in Miss Munroe's wake.

* * *

Dr. Grey's memorial service hadn't been like any funeral Marie had ever attended back in Meridian, at once too formal and too secular. Only one Bible passage had been read, no hymns sung, and there hadn't even been a sermon by the pastor - or priest, she supposed, since he'd worn one of those funky collar things. Instead, there had been eulogies and poetry and classical music and readings from a Psalter, and that wasn't _church_ like Marie had been raised. Then again, there were a lot of people here who weren't Christian (like Kitty or Miss Munroe), so maybe they hadn't wanted to upset anybody. The Northeast was a whole different world from southern Mississippi. Yet the real reason for her discomfort wasn't culture shock.

Marie blamed herself for Dr. Grey's death. It wasn't something she talked about, even to Bobby - even to Logan - but _she_ was the reason Dr. Grey was dead.

So she'd sat, small and miserable, in the church's rear, and when the service was over and everyone else got up to express condolences to the family, or just to mingle, she'd sat right where she was, toying with an unraveling thread in one of her gloves. She was so absorbed by that, in fact, she didn't hear the person approach to sit in the pew behind until he said, "Rogue."

Mr. Summers.

Starting like a hare, she spun around to stare with wide eyes. For a whole month, she'd been avoiding him - which hadn't been too hard, since he hadn't spent much time in the public parts of the mansion. But she simply hadn't been able to face him. He'd been kind to her after Logan had left, seeking her out to talk about mutations and how it felt to have a deadly one you couldn't control. The remnants of Logan in her head hadn't expected such empathy from Mr. Stick-in-the-Mud, but she'd discovered he wasn't quite what he seemed.

He'd asked her about her time on the road between Meridian and Laughlin City, inquiring bluntly if anyone had tried to assault her. Dr. Grey had asked that, too, not long after she'd arrived, but it had come during a medical exam. Mr. Summers' question hadn't been medical, but it also hadn't been voyeuristic. In fact, he'd always seemed kind of asexual to her, like a Renaissance marble - perfect but distant. She wasn't attracted to him, though she knew some other girls were. He just didn't give out those kinds of signals. (It was, she thought, a little weird, with a face like his.)

But he was nice, and his voice gentle, and if, at first, she hadn't wanted to talk about her time on the road, a week later, she'd changed her mind and sought him out. She hadn't been raped, no, but there had a been a couple attempts, and he'd talked to her about how she'd felt as if he might actually understand. Then he'd held her while she'd cried, and she'd felt safe.

In repayment, she'd gotten his fiancée killed.

So now, he was the last person she wanted to talk to, but he was sitting right behind her, leaning forward, forearms braced on the back of her pew, looking earnest. "Ye...es?" she asked; it came out stuttered, and embarrassed her. She wondered if she looked as scared and guilty as she felt.

He cocked his head. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you've been avoiding me since Canada."

"No!" she blurted. "Well, I mean, why'd you think I was avoiding you? I'm not avoiding you, I mean, of course I'm not avoiding you, I'm in your class, so how could I be avoiding you?"

He listened with a small smile for her tumbled protest, then glanced down at his hands, folded together in front of him. "For not avoiding me, you've managed to disappear like a rabbit every time I've tried to talk to you. I just wanted to say that you did a brave thing, at Alkali Lake, taking up the X-Jet. Most people wouldn't have tried. So I wanted to know - would you like to learn to fly? I'm certified to teach, not just to pilot."

Mouth open, she stared. "You're kidding?"

"Not at all."

"I crashed the plane!"

One side of his mouth quirked up. "Rogue - you landed a VTOL aircraft without sending it up in flames. That's not exactly easy. There's an old pilot's saying that any landing you can walk away from is a good landing."

Too shocked to speak, she half turned so she was facing sideways and stared down at her hands, clenching and unclenching them in confusion. Why was he asking her about flying lessons at his girlfriend's funeral? It was a bit _surreal_. "Don't you hate me?" she asked in a small voice.

"Why?" He sounded genuinely bewildered, and curious, she looked up. Both his eyebrows had hiked, and she didn't think he was faking his surprise.

"It's my fault."

"What's your fault?"

"This whole - Dr. Grey! What happened to Dr. Grey! It was me! If I hadn't tried flying that damn plane, I wouldn't have crashed it and you'd have been able to take off without . . . without . . . ." she trailed off helplessly, and began to sob.

He glanced around to see if anyone had overheard her outburst, even as he reached over the pew to stroke her hair. "Rogue. Marie - listen to me." He spoke softly and tipped her chin up, the rough pads of his fingers against her skin too brief for it to register the touch. "If you hadn't flown the plane closer, we wouldn't have been able to reach it before the dam broke. You took a terrible risk to save everyone. I'd call that pretty brave. And if we're going to place blame, I own a bigger share than you do. How do you think the dam got damaged in the first place?"

She raised her eyes to stare. "You did it?"

"Yes, I did it. Not on purpose, but I did it. Stryker was controlling me -"

"Like with Herr Wagner."

"Exactly. He sent me to stop the X-Men inside the base. I ran into Jean. I tried to _kill_ her, Marie - I couldn't stop myself. The fact I didn't owes only to the fact her power had grown enough to deflect my optic blast. It ricocheted, damaging one of the dam's support struts, and the weight of the water was too great. When Logan shut the spillway door to keep us from drowning, there was no pressure relief and the whole dam broke.

"So whose fault is that? Mine for being the one to have caused the damage? Jean's for being the one to deflect the beams in the wrong direction? Logan's for closing the spillway? Yours for flying the plane over to rescue us? It's all our fault, and none - and being guilty for choices we either couldn't control, or did in an effort to save others won't bring Jean back."

Marie just blinked. "You're so calm about it." How could he sit there, trying to reassure her, at his own fiancée's funeral?

But he just shook his head. "It's not like it happened yesterday. It's been almost five weeks."

Which was true, but her grandfather had missed her grandmother for months - or _years_, really. Five weeks was nothing. And it wasn't that Marie doubted his love for Dr. Grey; she'd seen him disintegrate on the plane, crazy with desperation. But sometimes, he acted as if there was nothing wrong, while at others, he seemed to be constantly angry. And occasionally, he wasn't seen at all, like the three days before the funeral when that new guy, Dr. McCoy, had taught all his classes. Now he was sitting here in a pew, looking all calm and groomed, giving her a pep talk and reassuring her.

That wasn't _normal_, was it? And she was worried about him. But she said now, "Thank you," covering his folded hands with one of her gloved ones. "I'll think about the flying."

"Good," he replied, rising to walk away.

When she mentioned the conversation to Bobby on the bus back to Salem Center, he just shrugged and said, "Mr. Summers doesn't like to show emotion. It's a pilot thing, I think. Ice water in the veins and all."

Marie didn't argue, but she also didn't think being a pilot was the sum total of it.

* * *

Ororo had missed Kurt at the memorial more than she'd expected to, and wondered if she ought to worry about that. He hadn't wanted to come to such a public affair, even if the crowd there would be liberal on the mutant question. It was one thing to be accepting of mutants who looked like Jean, or Ro or Scott. It was quite another to accept those who looked like Kurt. Hardly fair, but there it was, and if Kurt hadn't wanted to use Jean's memorial to make a point, or be stared at and whispered about, Ro could hardly blame him. Yet when the mansion came into view down Greymalkin Lane, and Ro (who was driving the big bus) could pick out Kurt's outline on the roof against the sky behind, she was oddly cheered.

Until he bamfed directly into the bus and almost caused her to run it off the road. Children (and adults) shouted and squealed and Kurt was wailing, "Turn around and go back! Turn around! Her spirit is angry and you must not go in!"

Fortunately, the professor was seated just behind Ro and his voice echoed above the sounds of surprise. "Everyone be calm!"

Ro had put on the brakes, bringing the bus to a halt while Kurt huddled down against the metal pole by the front door, clinging to it. His tail lashed back and forth, and in the bus behind, students had risen from their seats so they could see better. "Her spirit is angry," Kurt explained. "The house is not safe."

Ro exchanged a baffled look with the professor, who asked, "Not safe?"

A banging on the bus door kept Kurt from replying. It was Warren. He, Scott, Hank and several more students had been following in the school van. Ororo pulled the crank to open the door for him, and he called in, "What's wrong?" only then noticing Kurt there in the aisle in front of him. "Kurt?"

"I think we need to return to the mansion," the professor said. "Now."

"It's not safe!" Kurt protested.

"Kurt, I assure you, neither Jean nor her spirit is in the mansion." He tapped his skull. "Ororo?"

"Yes, sir." She put the bus back in gear and Warren didn't wait for further explanation, just ducked out to trot back to the van behind.

No one said anything as they drove the final two hundred yards up to the mansion's circle drive. What greeted them was shocking. Half the windows had been blasted out, glass littering the drive, lawn, and bushes, and the front door was hanging open, off its hinges. There were gasps and someone behind said, "What the . . . ?"

Heart in throat, Ro was already parking the bus and turning off the engine, but she couldn't leap out because someone had to help the professor into his chair. She could see Scott, Warren and Hank all running for the broken door, while students boiled out of the van and bus. "Walk!" Mrs. McCoy shouted from the bus rear, but after what had happened with Stryker, Ororo could hardly blame the children for their anxiety and their upset when their school was damaged twice in as many months.

With Kurt and Edna's help, Ro got the professor into his chair and they entered the mansion - though Kurt refused to cross the threshold. He sat outside on the porch. Ro wanted to yell at him for being ridiculous and superstitious, but bit her tongue. They were all upset, and she knew she shouldn't take out her own anger on Kurt.

The interior was a disaster, and after all their hard work cleaning up after Stryker, some children sat down on the floor to bawl. Mrs. McCoy and the professor moved among them, trying to offer comfort, while Logan just stood in the entryway across from the fireplace, looking stunned at the mess of glass and broken furniture. Scott, Hank and Warren were nowhere to be seen, but a moment later, the hard thump of feet on the main staircase announced Warren's return. He'd already lost the suit jacket and his wings were freed. "Except for broken windows, the upstairs hasn't been touched," he announced. Descending the final steps, he walked over to join Ororo.

"Where is Scott?" she asked.

"He went to check his room; he called down that it was fine. He'll be back in a minute."

"Warren - what is going on?"

Warren glanced around, then said softly, "It's not Scott. It can't be - he was driving the van."

"Kurt believes the mansion is haunted."

"Kurt's superstitious."

"So what _do_ you think?"

"I have no idea, but I don't believe in ghosts. I wasn't sure the professor was right, that Scott'd trashed his room, but I figured he knew better what Scott might do. But this - I think that cinches it. Whoever's doing this stuff, it's not Scott."

"It is not Logan, either; he was on the bus."

"I didn't assume it was. What about Kurt?"

"Why would he?" she asked, defensively.

He smiled. "I didn't mean he'd do it on purpose, Ro. I like him." Then the smile disappeared and he looked around at the broken vases, lamps and chandelier. "But maybe something weird about his mutation is causing a . . . reaction? I have no idea how, but do we have any experience with a teleporter? Kurt really _believes_ Jean's ghost is in the mansion, causing havoc. Maybe he's projecting it himself somehow?"

It was an interesting theory, but Ororo rebelled instinctively and she might have replied, but Scott was coming down the stairs. He looked at once furious and distressed. "I didn't do this!" he said.

Xavier, Edna McCoy and the students who were in the foyer all glanced up. Logan, Ro noticed, didn't. "No one believes that you did, Scott," the professor told him calmly. He motored over to the foot of the stairs. "No one believes that you did."

Scott still looked angry, but also mollified. He stood on the stair landing with hands on hips as he glanced around the foyer. Ro and Warren both walked over, shoes crunching glass. "What a fucking mess," Scott said, low enough that the students wouldn't overhear.

"I believe the damage is mostly cosmetic," the professor replied. "The windows are the most serious, but we have had to replace those before when Terry lost control of her voice." He was trying to make light of it, but Ororo suspected he was more troubled than he was letting on.

"At least it's not raining," Warren added.

"There are some spare panes in the garage," Scott said, "but Logan and I had better get to Home Depot tonight."

"What about the wake?" Ro asked, and Scott just stared at her.

"You want to have a wake in the middle of this?" And he stalked over to speak to Logan, then the two of them headed off in the direction of the back hallway leading to the garage. At the same time, the elevator to the sub-basement opened and Hank came out. His face was grim.

Warren had turned and his wings had gone up. "What?"

"The lab looks, if possible, even worse." Bending, he retrieved a large piece of shattered pottery that had once been an expensive (copy of) a Tang vase. The professor didn't keep real antiques in a mansion full of mutant teenagers with imperfect control. Most of those teenagers had scattered now when they'd heard that the upper floors weren't damaged - no doubt to verify with their own eyes that their belongings were safe - leaving the adults alone in the foyer. As Hank approached, he added, "It's not just the lab, either. I checked her office. It seems to have been the epicenter. This-" he gestured around - "is mostly displacement. But there, almost nothing is left in one piece. Even her desk is cracked down the middle. It looks as if something - or someone - lifted it several feet in the air, then let it drop. All the books are off their shelves, and her files have been scattered from one side of the room to the other, ankle-deep."

Warren turned to the professor. "The only person left here was Kurt," he said. "What if he caused this - not intentionally, but as some kind of side effect of his teleportation power?"

Hank appeared both intrigued as well as dubious. "But why might Herr Wagner do damage to Jean's possessions?"

Warren pursed his lips. "Kurt's convinced that Jean's spirit is haunting us because we didn't give her a proper funeral - or that's what he told me a few weeks ago."

"_Today_ was her funeral," Ororo pointed out. "If he truly believed that she was upset because she had not yet had a funeral, why would he pick the day it was held to tear up the mansion?"

Warren shrugged. "I don't know. I'm just putting pieces together. We were gone, he was here, the place got trashed. I didn't say he did it on purpose, Ro -"

"Why not simply _ask_ Kurt what he saw?" the professor interrupted before Warren and Ororo could fall to arguing.

"He won't come in," Ro said, gesturing helplessly.

Xavier closed his eyes a moment and, after a brief pause, Kurt bamfed into the foyer. He was crouched down as was his wont, but he no longer seemed scared even while he remained clearly uncomfortable. Xavier motored over to him. "Thank you," he said.

"You are certain?" Kurt asked, no doubt continuing their telepathic conversation.

"If her spirit was here, it is no longer. But we would very much like to know what you saw."

"Fire," he said. It wasn't the ghostly moaning or levitating the others might have expected. "Fire that did not burn. It seemed to be . . . searching."

"Searching?"

"Yes. I was in the den, watching the movies." Kurt and his movies; despite the gravity of the situation, Ororo smiled. "That was when I saw the fire. It . . . ran about, along the walls, around the windows, over the furniture. It scared me, so I teleported out of the room, but it followed. It moved all over the house. Then everything began to shake, as if in a . . . ah -"

"Earthquake?" Xavier supplied.

"Yes, an earthquake. Only for a moment, then the fire was gone. It disappeared, but as it did, all the windows exploded. It was _angry_, professor. She was angry. Whatever she sought, she did not find it, and she was angry." He ran one of those peculiar hands into his hair. "She will be back. She _wants_, and she is lost."

The professor was frowning, Edna appeared thoughtful, and Hank curious. Only Warren still seemed skeptical, almost as if he didn't want to believe.

_Perhaps he didn't,_ an unkind part of Ororo mused;_ he had Scott all to himself now._

She stopped that train of thought. Warren and Jean had been very close. He wouldn't want her dead, just so he could have Scott.

_But wanting Jean to die wasn't the same thing, _the unkind part pointed out,_ as wanting her to stay out of the picture, now that she was dead._

"This makes no sense," she said aloud (to shut up the voice in her head).

The professor sighed, looking suddenly very old. "I cannot discount the possibility of a soul, Ororo. There is more to our consciousness than chemical reactions, or so I have come to believe in my life. But I do not sense Jean's presence in this house."

"Would you, though?" Hank asked, not hostilely but with genuine curiosity.

"I don't know," Xavier answered honestly. "But I think I might." Kurt was listening with interest, Warren with his arms crossed, wings out (trembling just a little, Ro noticed).

"I believe in ghosts," Edna said suddenly. "I've seen them before." Everyone turned to look at her, surprised (except for Hank). "Like Charles says, there's more to this ol' world that just what we see with our eyes. Yet I can't say this story sounds much like any other I've heard."

"Not for me, either," Kurt admitted. "But it is her spirit. I am sure of it."

The impromptu huddle broke up then, each going his or her way to begin the clean-up. Warren and Ro departed for the janitor's closet. "You do not believe any of this," she said to him as they gathered brooms and dustbins. It wasn't a question.

He shook his head, bending to pick up bins. "It's crazy."

"So what do you think is happening?"

"I told you, I have no fucking idea. But Jean hasn't come back from the dead to look for anything, or haunt us, either."

"You are angry."

"You damn well better believe it! I want a piece of whoever's doing this if it's on purpose. It's not funny. The kids are upset - again - and Scott . . . ." He trailed off. "Scott doesn't know if he's coming or going, right now, and this kind of thing doesn't help."

"Do you fear that he will believe it is her spirit?"

Warren jerked his head around, glaring. "No. He's got more sense than that. But all this shit makes it harder for him to start healing, and that's cruel. He's been through _enough_, dammit."

Ororo didn't think Warren meant only in the last few months. She knew a bit about Scott's past, things that he'd shared with her. They were enough alike in both personality and background that they'd formed a natural connection - but not a romantic one. She'd never been romantically attracted to Scott, and he'd been head-over-heels for Jean as long as she'd known him. "He has been through enough," she agreed quietly while counting brooms. "We have all been through enough this fall."

Warren glanced away. "Sorry. I didn't mean -"

"I know. And I understand why you are angry."

They let it go at that.

* * *

Neither Logan nor Scott said a word about the reason they were in a Home Depot on a Saturday night buying replacement panes for windows. It seemed easier not to talk about it. Logan didn't know what he thought, and Summers' face was sketched into lines of permanent reverse. Instead of bringing up Jean, funerals, or ghosts, Summers asked - out of the blue - "Can you remember anything else about Japan?"

He sounded genuinely curious, and Logan thought about it a minute, then said simply, "No," adding, "Doesn't mean I wouldn't remember, y'know, if I was in the right situation."

"Flashbacks, yeah. You think you forget and then all of a sudden, you remember." He wasn't speaking theoretically. It sounded as if he'd had them, too - a detail Logan filed away to ponder later. "Listen," Summers went on, "I know a good Japanese restaurant that's on the way back to the mansion, and we're going to miss dinner otherwise. You want to stop there on the way?"

Logan just stared at him for a minute. The idea of going memory hunting with Summers in tow wasn't high on his list, but looked at from another angle, the kid might be the best choice. He didn't pry. Xavier would ask questions. So would Marie, and even Ro, but Summers wasn't nosey the same way. Logan wouldn't have thought the kid gave a flying fuck about Logan's memory, except for the offer. So he said, "Yeah, okay."

And that was how he and Summers wound up at a Japanese steakhouse with a menu printed in Japanese as well as English. And Logan discovered he could read the Japanese as easily as the English - but that was the extent of what he discovered. Most of the meal was passed either in silence or discussing (new) mansion repairs. "Looks like I'll be in business for a while," he said.

"Looks that way," Summers agreed.

"So, this girl, Colleen Wing? Wing ain't a Japanese name."

"No, it's not. Her paternal grandfather was an American GI in World War II; he married a Japanese woman. Col's dad teaches Japanese Imperial history at Columbia."

"She looks more than a quarter."

"Her mom's Japanese American."

"Gotcha. And you two were never, y'know, a couple?" And now who was being nosey, Logan wondered? But Summers didn't seem to care.

"No. She had a crush on me, but that's it."

"Still has a crush on you, kid."

Summers just eyed him. "Col and I were good friends - still are. But I loved Jean."

"Ain't contesting that," Logan replied. "Just observing."

They didn't talk more about Colleen Wing. In the car on the way back, Logan threw out, "Drake says you're an orphan."

Summers glanced over as he took the highway into the Salem area. "Yes."

"Said it ain't a secret."

"It's not."

Summers still didn't elaborate, and frustrated, Logan was reduced to asking. "How'd you wind up with Xavier? He find you when your power manifested?"

"No. I came to the mansion before that."

"That where you met Jeannie?"

"Yes."

"The winged kid, too?"

Summers laughed. "Winged kid? We call him Angel, Logan, and yes, that's where I met Warren. And before you ask, Hank, too. Hank and Jean were both already known to Xavier when I got there, but she was away at college, so I didn't actually meet her till Christmas. We four were the first."

"Ro?"

"Came a few years later. Hank was pretty much gone by then. Jean was in med school, and Warren and I were at Yale. Anything else you want to know? My favorite color? Food? My social security number?" The tone rested somewhere between amused and sarcastic.

"Fuck you, Summers. I was just trying to get a sense of things."

Silence reigned for a few minutes, then Summers said, "Sorry." Another brief pause followed, and without looking at Logan, he went on, "I wasn't quite sixteen when I arrived. My powers hadn't manifested yet, but they knew I was a mutant. Warren came a few months later; he's about two years older than me and we've been friends since the beginning. Like I said, Hank was already there, finishing up med school residency. He's older than all of us, but he's a genius, too. He was only in his early twenties then. Most of the equipment in the basement was his first. Jean inherited and added to it when she came back from Columbia to work here. Hank was her inspiration. They still work together on some things." That brought Summers to a full stop, and he corrected himself in a choked voice - "Worked. _Dammit_."

Logan didn't reply, but he'd learned more from Summers in five minutes than from the rest of them in five weeks. Maybe he should just have asked the kid to begin with. "How'd you guys come up with the idea for your little leather club?"

That elicited a snort from the driver's side. "Rescuing Ro, actually. Well, it didn't start right then, but the basic idea - yeah. All this stuff has come gradually, even the school. Xavier's opened as an accredited school only about three years ago. Before that, it was just the professor taking in a couple students now and then to help them finish high school - like Warren and me."

"So how old _are_ you, kid?"

"Twenty-nine. And I'm not a kid, Logan."

Looking over in surprise, Logan said, "You don't look twenty-nine."

"I've never looked my age. But yeah, I'm twenty-nine, and I've been on my own since I was fourteen. I'm not a kid."

"No, you're not," Logan agreed. No one who'd been on his own that young was a kid, and it explained a lot about Summers. "But maybe you should've had the chance to be."

"That's why I do what I do," Summers replied. "So these kids can be kids."

Back at the mansion, they unloaded the glass panes. After they'd set one down on a table and Summers had turned back towards the truck, Logan grabbed him and, in a neat spin, slammed him up against the wall.

The kid fought back - and he fought dirty, going for tender places without hesitation. Logan was impressed despite himself. He still pinned him fairly easily, face shoved into the wall, arms twisted up behind him. "Call uncle," he said.

But Summers didn't call. Instead, he went ballistic, thrashing and twisting in Logan's grip even harder than before, though a good deal less skillfully. He was just panicking now, and Logan let him go, backing off with hands raised as Summers spun on him. "Relax, kid," Logan said.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Summers demanded, shaking with rage, face all flushed and hand on his glasses - where the visor trigger would be.

"Just seeing how you fought."

"Are you _insane_? If I'd had my visor, you'd be dead now!"

"Doubt that," Logan replied dryly. "But I noticed, at the Statue, you ain't got much peripheral vision; I wanted to see how you responded when attacked from the side. You're pretty fast. But I could teach you to be faster."

"I don't need your goddamn help."

"Right. I just pinned you in two minutes flat."

They glared at one another until Summers looked away. "I taught myself to fight."

"I can tell. And I ain't saying you're bad - you're not - just that I could make you better."

Tipping his head, Summers regarded Logan with what Logan supposed was curiosity. Finally, he said, "Okay. Fine." A pause, then he added, "I'd like the chance to kick your ass."

Logan grinned. "You can try, Cyclops."

* * *

Hank had left the upstairs reconstruction to the rest while he and his mother tackled the lab. He couldn't shake Kurt's assertion that the "fire" had seemed to be looking for something because there was some kind of pattern in the mess. It wasn't random, but reminded him of a child in a hurry, and whatever wasn't the object desired had been tossed aside in a casual wake of the unwanted. This included entire boxes of (now-shattered) glasswear, several rolling chairs, a couple of tables, and a 200-pound microscope (ruined, unfortunately, and that would cost more to replace than all the broken windows together). The problem was that Hank couldn't figure out what the searcher had sought.

"This is _puzzling_," he muttered more than once.

To Hank, the world was more interesting for its enigma. Yet he also believed that everything had an explanation. Science and the supernatural weren't in conflict to Hank McCoy, and the more he learned, the more awed he became by the beauty of all that lay yet waiting to be discovered. Knowledge was a dance of what one perceived with what one dreamed, and he was certain that _something_ was afoot in the mansion. They simply lacked enough information yet to say what it was.

He hadn't gotten much further by late Monday morning, however, than righting the upended furniture and cleaning up the scattered paper when Logan showed up wearing a workbelt and toting an extra cup of coffee. At that moment, Hank was the only one in the lab, his mother having gone up to prepare lunch. "You weren't kidding," Logan said as he entered and looked around in shock. "A tornado went through here."

"Indeed," Hank replied, setting aside the latest stack of files in order to come relieve Logan of one of the coffee mugs. "And thank you," he added, raising the mug.

"Sure."

Hank expected Logan to depart then, as the man didn't seem any too fond of medical facilities, but he didn't. He just sipped coffee and looked around himself. Hank considered inquiring, but decided to let the weight of silence do it for him. Finally, the other man set down his mug on one of the cleared tables and said, "Summers told me that you and Jean were both already here when he came, so you must've known her best."

Hank felt one eyebrow creep up, Spock-like. "I knew her the _longest_ - Charles aside - but Scott knew her best, followed by Warren."

"Oh." Logan continued to look about the room rather than at Hank, as if nervous. "Well, I just . . . wondered, y'know, what she was like, when she was younger." He didn't make it a question though he'd clearly meant it as one.

"She was curious, forceful, compassionate, enthusiastic, optimistic - much as always."

"She and Summers - they made a funny pair. More like siblings, y'know? She was older than him."

And Hank's eyes narrowed. He'd heard quite a lot from various quarters about Logan and Jean. Warren didn't like the man anymore than Scott did. Edna was more forgiving, as was Ro, but one thing in particular disturbed Hank**:** that Logan had blatantly chased Jean in front of Scott, and then again later, when Scott had been a prisoner of Stryker. That wasn't honorable behavior, in Hank McCoy's books. "Scott is much more mature than his chronological age, Logan, and Scott and Jean have a long history. They were together for nine years, and friends longer than that." Pulling out a stool, Hank swung a leg over it to seat himself. "Certain things just go together. Peanut butter and jelly. Courier and Ives. Gin and tonic. Jean and Scott."

Logan's nostrils flared. "You sayin' I never had a chance, bub?"

"To be blunt, yes. Charles and Warren are too polite to say this, and Scott too angry for you to believe him. So apparently, it's left to me to enlighten you on a few matters." He also wasn't staying at the mansion, which granted him a certain freedom to speak the truth that Logan didn't want to hear, and he studied the other man for a moment before continuing. Logan had his feet splayed and his muscles tensed as if for fighting, but Hank remained perched on his stool in a non-threatening way. "However attractive Jean may have found you, her heart belonged to Scott. I very much doubt that would have changed."

"So you say."

"So I know, Logan. They had a remarkable bond, one that lasted through trials and tribulations that most couples never have to face. You knew Jean only a brief time."

Logan's jaw worked helplessly, and Hank felt mildly sorry for him - but only mildly. Logan needed to understand the dynamics as they truly were, not as he wished them to be. "She was attracted to me," Logan said finally, tapping his nose. "I could tell, _Dr. _McCoy. So whatever you 'know,' her scent told a different story."

"I never denied that she was attracted to you. It's commonly called chemistry. But she didn't love you, and to compare your feelings for Jean to Scott's is unbelievably arrogant on your part."

"I loved her."

"No, you did not. Neither of you knew the other well enough. _Love_ consists of more than physical attraction. It consists of a shared outlook on life and a history, a commitment each to stand by the other regardless, and acceptance of the other, warts and all. Jean and Scott had that, which isn't to say you didn't feel genuine affection for her - I believe that you did - but it wasn't close to what Scott felt, and it's time you recognized as much. You need to find a place here that doesn't involve displacing Scott."

Logan had his shoulders pulled back and his chin pulled in, as if to spit out a retort, but it never got past his lips. Turning on his heel instead, he stalked out, and Hank returned to cleaning up the mess with a sigh. He wasn't a confrontational man by nature, but sometimes it was necessary. "It's a dirty job, but someone had to do it," he muttered to himself.

* * *

**Notes:** Many thanks to Kathy for the Japanese. For those unfamiliar with Colleen Wing, she belongs to the Marvel universe, where she and Misty Knight (Jean's old roommate) formed the "Daughters of the Dragon," heros for hire. Misty started out as a P.I., while Colleen had samurai training. I've modified their background here so that Misty (still Jean's old college roommate) is a police detective, while Colleen is just a friend of Scott's from Yale. Back in the day, in comic canon, Colleen did have a thing for Scott; it was never reciprocated, though he considered her a close friend. Colleen was first introduced fictionally in _Special:_ "Consonance." Logan's Japanese knowledge comes from the comics.

On Artie ... I've tried to make some kind of sense of what we saw in the film. Film Artie wasn't comics Artie, though both are mute (in Claremont's novelization Artie isn't, but in the film he appeared to be). Comics Artie had a psionic mutation that involved projecting images for communication, and he didn't look entirely normal - although his tongue was apparently just like everyone else's. Film Artie looked perfectly normal . . . until he opened his mouth. Although we didn't see any fangs (nor how he ate), there _has_ to be more to that mutation than a snake tongue! For clarification, Theresa Roarke/Cassidy is Siryn from the film; in the novelization, Claremont calls her Tracy Roarke (Roarke was her mother's maiden name), but she's Terry to me. The novelization gives Artie's age as 12 but he looked a bit older, so I've made him 13. Couldn't resist the reference to Abercrombie and Fitch, for whom Marsden has modeled.


	10. Personal Journal: Departures

_**From Scott Summers' Personal Journal:  
**_

Between the time that Rogue and Logan first showed up until Jean's death, I don't think I slept a single night through peacefully. Not that I slept much after, either, but at first, my insomnia owed to that son of a bitch waltzing into our lives and acting as if he could take Jean away from me with a snap of his fingers. There's confidence, and then there's plain hubris. It wasn't as if I'd never before had a man make a bid for her attention, but usually, all it took was showing up at her side for the interloper to drop it.

Not with that Canadian bastard. I was a joke to him, a wet-behind-the-ears puppy to be ripped off at his pleasure. Steal my bike, steal my car, steal my woman . . . He wanted my life.

_Well, cocksucker, I worked too hard to get this life, so go win your own. _That's what I wanted to tell him, but I kept it locked behind my teeth and my poker face.

Yet it wasn't Logan's disrespect that kept me up at night. It was the way Jean responded to him.

I may wear dark glasses, but blind, I'm not, and I saw how she liked his attention. I heard some of the girls call him "sex with legs." They'd never say that of me. I actively seek to avoid it, in fact, and never came on to Jean the way he did, all brusque and _manly_. She always told me she preferred a gentle touch, but if so, why react to him like she did? Just something different after nine years?

"Don't be so insecure, Scott," she'd said to me more than once while the fuzzball was around, and after he'd left, too. And once, she'd yelled, "If you're so damn worried about it, why don't you just _marry_ me? It's not like I'm the one holding out here."

I'd yelled back, "Maybe I don't want to marry someone who wants someone else!" and stormed out of the bedroom. We didn't talk for two days, and when we finally did return to speaking, we pretended nothing nasty had been said at all.

That's how I handle conflict. I don't. I'm a master of avoidance. But it wasn't just Jean's attraction to Logan that kept me up at nights. After she used Cerebro to find Rogue, something profound began to go wrong with her powers. It started small. Headaches, sudden shakes as if she'd forgotten to eat, and most disturbing, the inability to shield herself from the thoughts of others. She said it was just a reaction to using that damn machine, and would pass. I believed her because I needed to; I felt helpless. But it didn't get better, it got _worse_, and I said nothing because confrontation, like conflict, isn't something I handle well - at least not when it comes to the personal, and especially not if we were having trouble in other areas already.

So I felt as if my entire world were coming undone while I lay on my back in bed at night, waiting for the bedroom to start shaking. When it did, I'd wake her from whatever nightmare she was having and pretend nothing weird was going on. Now I look back and curse myself for not saying anything sooner. Instead, I treated her as if I didn't trust her - so she didn't trust me with whatever was happening to her.

I want to blame her for that. I want to hate her, and sometimes I do. But then the truth bites me on the ass. Whatever was going on with Logan, whatever she felt, I acted like a five-year-old about it. It hurt that she might find someone else attractive - someone so different from me. It _hurt_, dammit. But I couldn't just tell her that, and now I wonder, if I had, would things have been different?

I find it ironic that Logan's offered to teach me how to fight. I look forward to it, because I want just one good swing at him - break his nose, his jaw . . . I don't care what. It'll heal, but it'll hurt, at least for a minute. Maybe it'll hurt like I hurt so he'll know what it feels like to be me with this huge, gaping _hole_ inside my chest that won't ever stop bleeding.

That assumes he'd care, of course. He wouldn't, the smug bastard, and I'll die and go to hell before I tell him how I feel.

Thus, my chronic insomnia had me up at two in the morning, sitting in the dark of the den, staring mindlessly at a black TV screen. He must not have realized anyone was there until stepping into the room and sensing my movement as I looked around - perhaps smelling me. (Must not have been too hard, since we'd been working on repairs all day and I was sweaty.)

He stopped short and I stood, turning to face him as if unconsciously preparing for battle. Even in the dim light from the windows, I could see that he was fully dressed and carrying a backpack. "You're leaving," I said.

Shrugging, he moved forward, headed for the door. "Don't worry - your bike and your car are still in the garage. I called a taxi."

I wasn't sure what I felt. Relief, certainly. I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't be glad to see the back of him. But the rage boiling beneath that surprised me. "Your business done here, so you're moving on? Responsibility isn't your strong suit, is it, Wolverine?"

Turning, he stared. "Like it matters to you."

"It might matter to the _kids_ - to Marie. Did you even tell her good-bye?"

"Left her a note." Logan turned his head back towards the door. "Look, I don't, ah, do well with my boots under one bed for long."

"The kids don't need one more person giving up on them."

"I ain't giving up on them."

"No, of course not. You're just sneaking out in the middle of the night."

"I ain't _sneaking_. I'm leaving. I'm in people's way, so I'm getting out of the way."

"What in hell gave you that idea?" Logan only shrugged in reply, but didn't move any closer to the door, either. "Fine," I said at last. "Go - but then come back. You owe the kids that, Logan. And you owe me self-defense lessons - or don't you keep your promises?"

"I keep 'em. But you can take care of yourself, I think."

"Nice of you to notice."

He shuffled his feet, a soft rasp on the carpet. "Kid - Scott - I think maybe we need some space, you'n me." His breath gusted out. "I didn't mean to cause trouble for you and Jeannie." I tensed, not knowing how to respond to that unexpected apology. "It was just a way to yank your chain, then . . . she was . . . ." He paused, finishing finally, "You ever want something so bad you could taste it? But you didn't even realize you wanted it till it was right in front of you - so close - but you knew you didn't deserve it, or have a prayer?"

I felt gut-punched. "Yes. I have."

"She made me feel like that. It's just what she was, y'know?"

"I know." For the first time since Logan had arrived, I felt some kind of genuine kinship with the man. "Jean was my world, Logan. Or a big part of it."

He nodded, still not looking at me. I could discern his silhouette against the light from the windows. "I didn't see what she meant to you at first, but yeah, on the plane, at the end - " He turned while I was mute with pain, and headed for the door. Opening it, he paused. "You can tell the kids I went to Japan."

"And what do I tell them when they ask if you'll be back?"

"Tell 'em, yeah, I'll be back. I guess I got responsibilities now, eh?" And the door clicked to behind him.

Returning to the couch, I collapsed on it. Some of the knots inside me had loosened. not all of them, but some.

* * *

**A humorous afternote:** The line "Steal my bike, steal my car, steal my woman . . . He wanted my life," is a deliberate paraphrase of James Marsden's own words about Wolverine's jealousy of Cyclops. :-D


	11. Revelations

Hank was on his third cup of coffee on Thursday morning, still cleaning up after the Saturday "disturbance" and puzzling over the pattern that wasn't a pattern. Yet no new insights emerged, so finishing his coffee, he decided to consider it all from a new angle and launched himself straight up, grabbing the iron bar he'd hung from the ceiling years ago and flipping himself over to hang by his knees. Jean had called it his 'bat perch,' and he claimed to like it because it made all the blood flow to his brain, but really, he just got a kick out of seeing the world upside-down.

And so, looking about from above, he caught sight of something he hadn't noticed previously - a rack containing two test tubes on a far counter behind a box of gloves and another of antiseptic wipes, overlooked and forgotten. They appeared to have something _in_ them - probably spoilt by this point - yet Hank was curious to see what Jean had been working on just before the crisis, so he somersaulted to the floor and made his way over to retrieve the rack. It was a wonder they hadn't been destroyed with everything else in the room, but tucked away as they were, the poltergeist must have missed them.

They turned out to be half-prepared DNA pellets for sequencing - useless now - but curious for the name on the label: Jean's. Normally, Jean labeled samples by the donor.

Why would she have been _re-_running her own DNA?

Baffled, he checked the other samples in storage, and found several more cheek swabs with her name on them. Removing two, he prepped both for the centrifuge, then returned to cleaning and tried not to think too much about why Jean was sampling herself.

Then a new idea occurred to him, and he seated himself at her SUN workstation, let it read his thumb-print and retinal scan, then called up the activity logs. This wasn't something he'd do normally, but he was curious about the most recent files she'd accessed.

Unsurprisingly, there hadn't been much activity since mid-October. The last person on the computer had been himself, and before that, his mother, and before that . . . Xavier? Perhaps just a spot check after the attack -

- except the date was wrong. Hank frowned. That wasn't a day or so after the attack. It was the day _of_ the attack, and the log recorded a full download of the DNA archive.

"Oh, shit," he muttered, sitting back in his chair and staring in disbelief at the log. "Oh, my stars and garters . . . ."

Only a limited number of people had access to such sensitive data - himself, Jean, Moira McTaggart . . . and, of course, the professor. Yet William Stryker had managed to acquire Xavier's retinal and thumb-prints when he'd captured him. That was how he'd accessed Cerebro in the first place - and a jackpot library of mutant DNA code must have been too tempting for him not to try getting at that, too.

This was bad. This was _very, very bad_.

Pushing back, he hurried out the door, hit the elevator override, and rushed upstairs, running for Xavier's office to bang loudly on the door and stick in his head (not thinking there might be a class in session). In fact, there was a class, but one look at his expression and Xavier sent the students packing for the day. "We shall continue tomorrow," he told them.

As soon as the kids were gone, Hank said, "Charles, we have a problem. All the stored files with genetic codes for our students - past and present - have been downloaded. Given the date, and the fact the access was under your security, I can only assume that Stryker took them at the same time he took parts of Cerebro."

The professor seemed momentarily stunned, but recovered quickly. "Then that data now lies beneath the lake -"

"Maybe," Hank cautioned. "Stryker was a practiced researcher, whatever else we may think of him, and the first thing one does is duplicate data and store it in different places. We have three copies of that same information ourselves - one here, one with Moira, and one with me. It may be that Stryker didn't have time to copy it, but I wouldn't bet on it. He had offices in Washington, didn't he?"

"Yes, he did." Xavier didn't appear at all happy. "But the FBI confiscated everything in those offices, after Alkali Lake. The information on those files was encrypted, wasn't it?"

"Yes, but I'm unsure how long that will foil them. While Jean did encrypt it, I don't think she used the most sophisticated system. The idea was to keep it out of the hands of nosey students - not crack computer experts from the federal government. That data has names and personal information, in addition to DNA records, and while all of that _should_ be covered under privacy acts and we _should_ be able to request its return as stolen information - given the current political climate, I would not count on receiving _all_ copies, if you follow."

Xavier's frown only deepened. "Why wasn't this discovered sooner?"

"Probably because no one thought to check the logs. It was mere chance that I did so. I wanted to know what Jean had been working on last. I found something . . . odd. I believe she was re-running DNA samples of herself. Why, I have no idea. I found extra samples, and am now running them, too. The ones she started are ruined. It'll take a while, but as soon as I have the results sequenced, I'll let you know if I find anything peculiar. In the meantime -"

Hands folded beneath his chin, Xavier shook his head. "In the meantime, I shall see what I can learn. Right now, I most sincerely regret the loss of Cerebro."

Standing, Hank nodded. "I know. I'm working on that, as well."

"Of course. It wasn't a complaint, Henry - or not one aimed in your direction. Your assistance in the last week and a half has been much appreciated."

Nodding, Hank went back down to the lab and SUN station. The bad news delivered, he left fixing that problem to the professor and returned to his own original interest - why Jean was running her own DNA. In the next several hours, he discovered that she'd also been studying the mutated DNA of Robert Kelly - which was perhaps predictable - but there were comparisons made between his and that of herself, Ororo, Scott, Logan and Marie. The data used had come from files already on record, including those of Logan and Marie done when they'd first arrived at the mansion. All were in a subfile called "before." Jean had also created a _second_ file for DNA data, called simply "after." Frowning, Hank rose to re-examine the samples in storage. Sure enough, they included Ororo, Scott, and Marie - but not Logan, which suggested that Jean had taken these samples after Logan had already left the mansion, and hadn't had time to take any when he'd returned. Hank pulled out all of them and began prepping them for processing. When he was finished and they were spinning in the centrifuge, he headed upstairs to find Logan and get a new sample from him as well.

Except that Logan wasn't in his room, or anywhere else in the mansion, as far as Hank could tell. Baffled, he returned to the professor's office - only to find Xavier engaged in a shouting match with Scott and Ororo. He couldn't hear what was being said (the door was too thick), but those were not happy voices in the room beyond.

He knocked anyway. A moment later it was jerked open by Scott. "What?"

Hank's eyebrow flickered. "May I come in?"

Sighing heavily, Scott moved aside and opened the door wider. Hank entered. "Yes, Henry?" Xavier asked. He sounded impatient.

Suppressing his curiosity about the bone of contention (but suspecting that it had to do with the missing files), he said, "I am in search of our Wolverine. I need to take a DNA sample."

That clearly threw all of them, but Scott answered, "Logan's gone. He left last night."

Hank's eyebrows shot up. "What?"

"He left. Most of the repairs are made - the big ones anyway - and he left, went to Japan. He ran into Colleen at the funeral and found out some things that made him think there might be some answers in Japan to who he was. Or that's what I assume."

"He . . . just left?" Hank felt both relief and a tug of guilt, and noticed that neither Xavier nor Ororo seemed surprised by the news.

"Yeah," Scott said now, hands on his hips. "He said something about getting out of the way for a while. Plus this Japan thing." Scott shrugged. "We didn't have a fight - so don't even ask."

Hank swallowed, wondering if he should say anything about his own conversation with Logan on the previous Sunday, but all three seemed tense, as if just waiting for him to leave in order to return to their argument. He might have inquired into the disagreement, but had a more pressing matter just then. "Tell me - has anyone cleaned out Logan's room yet?"

"What?"

"His room? Do you know if his room - especially the bathroom trash - has been cleaned?"

"I have no freakin' idea!" Scott said at the same time as Xavier's, "I don't believe anyone has yet done so, no."

"Thanks." And Hank hurried out, headed upstairs to the second floor where Logan had been housed - in Hank's old room, ironically. He didn't need Logan, per se, he just needed something Logan had discarded that might contain a usable DNA sample. The room wasn't locked and, upon entry, it did indeed appear to have been cleaned. The bed had been made and smoothed military style, the drawers and closets stood empty, and the towels had been folded neatly on their racks.

But trash still filled the little bathroom bin, and Hank let out a subdued cry of glee. It contained a veritable treasure trove of potential samples - used Q-tips and bits of toilet paper containing bloodstains. Logan had probably cut himself while shaving; although the cuts had healed, the blood would still have needed to be wiped away. There was even . . . well, all right, perhaps Logan _had_ just blown his nose into those tissues, but Hank didn't think so. Grinning and gloving his hands, Hank retrieved and bagged everything, then headed back to his lab.

It was only once there and prepping the latest samples - a mostly mindless task - that his thoughts returned to the fact Logan had left, and to the fact the professor, Scott and Ororo were upstairs fighting about something they hadn't seemed inclined to discuss with him.

As to the first, Hank feared that Logan's departure was his own fault, though his intent hadn't been to drive the man away. He'd only wanted him to see mansion dynamics more realistically. Logan had struck Hank as fundamentally selfish, if not cruelly so. He'd simply been on his own so long that he was unused to thinking about others - rusty at social skills. Even so, Hank wasn't impressed by his decision to run from the problem. Perhaps Warren had a point and the man should be regarded as a loose cannon - useful if present, but not to be counted on.

Then again, if Hank were truly fair, Scott had once been a loose cannon himself, just as selfish and unpredictable, prickly and wounded and downright mean when cornered. Now, he'd become the cornerstone of Xavier's dream - but that had taken thirteen years, and Hank knew Warren would defend Scott to his dying breath. Anyone he perceived as hurting Scott became the opposition.

Idly, Hank wondered if that would have extended to Jean now, as well.

Jean had hurt Scott deeply in the last few months (whether or not Scott wanted to admit it), but Hank suspected it had been a two-way street. When threatened, Scott was exceptionally good at drawing blood from those he loved, with an unerring aim for the emotional jugular. It wasn't one of his more charming traits.

And that returned his thoughts to the probable subject of the quarrel in Xavier's office. From the physical arrangement observed, he suspected that Xavier wanted to pursue a plan to which Scott and Ororo (or would that be Cyclops and Storm?) objected - vociferously. Hank didn't doubt that Charles would, eventually, recover the missing data by whatever means it took. While the professor numbered among the most moral men Hank McCoy had ever met, his ethics operated at what Kohlberg had called the level of Universal Ethical Principles. Xavier followed the law only as long as it was just, and felt no compunction about breaking it if doing so would protect life, safety, sanity, or self-respect, particularly that of anyone placed in his care. Scott and Ororo were both inclined to agree, so Hank wondered what plan had them both up in (verbal) arms.

He would ask Scott later. Right now, he had sequencing to prepare. That would take time, but he'd likely have answers by the next evening - assuming there were any to be found.

* * *

"_Mystique? _Professor - have you lost your mind?"

"No, Cyclops. In this matter, our interests and those of Magneto's Brotherhood run parallel."

"So we invite in the devil to sleep with us? We all saw how well that worked at Alkali -"

"We did not have a choice!" Ororo snapped. "They had information we needed."

"I'm not blaming you," he snapped back and Ororo pulled in her chin, but dropped the subject. She still felt a mix of anger and guilt at having worked with Magneto in the first place, and doubted that Cyclops would have made that decision - for good or ill. That they probably wouldn't have made it into the base so easily without Magneto wasn't something she cared to ponder.

At the moment, though, she and Scott were on the same side. She couldn't believe the professor had seriously suggested that they seek out Mystique's assistance in recovering the missing files. "I am no mean thief, myself," she put in. "I could get them back, too."

Xavier smiled at her. "I have no doubt that you could, Storm. But first, you would have to know where to find them. We have no idea where they are, and the person best equipped to find them happens to be Raven Darkholme."

"You could do a mental search -"

"Not without Cerebro, Scott. Even I have limitations." It was said tongue-in-cheek, but Ororo wasn't amused, and didn't think Scott was either.

Before either of them could respond, though, Hank McCoy knocked on the door, interrupting the meeting to ask where Logan was. Hadn't he heard that Logan had left during the night? It had been all the buzz that morning. And why would he care about Logan's _trash_, of all things? But she was more focused on the matter at hand, and when he was gone, they took up right where they'd left off. "I cannot condone involving Mystique," she said.

"Me either," Scott added. "_Mystique and Magneto left us to die_ at Alkali. And she tried to kill you just a month before that, professor."

Leaning back in his chair, Xavier looked out a window at the sere brown November lawn. "Raven and Erik were intent on securing their own escape, not on arranging our demise. Erik will do what he believes to be necessary, but he won't go out of his way to harm someone else. It isn't . . . efficient."

"You think he'd have hesitated one minute even if he _had_ known that dam was going to crack?" Scott asked.

"No, he wouldn't. But he would have moved the plane to where we could reach it in time."

Snorting, Scott looked away. No one added that, had Magneto moved the plane, Jean would still be alive. "That blue bitch still tried to kill you, professor."

"No, she tried to disable me, and succeeded. Had she meant to kill me, Scott, I would be dead."

"I can't believe you're defending her! Or _him_. He would've made you _kill_ every non-mutant on the planet!"

Xavier's lips thinned. "I know. And I do not - and never will - forgive him for that. Just as I do not forgive him for _many_ things." There was a pause while the two men just stared at one another, then Xavier went on, "But sometimes, necessity requires compromise. We need Raven's unique talents - and for this, she will provide them, I'm quite certain."

"Fuck it," Scott muttered and headed for the door, jerking it open. "You're not going to listen to me, so why'd you even ask?" The door slammed behind him.

Ororo winced and glanced at the professor, who simply looked _pained_. She had long ago gathered that Scott had personal issues with Magneto that stood quite apart from any battle of philosophies. Cyclops ceased thinking straight whenever Magneto was involved.

"Do you wish me to go with Mystique, to ensure that she . . . behaves?"

Xavier turned back to her. "You would agree to that? I was under the impression you concurred with Scott's assessment."

"I do. But we all know you will go through with this anyway." She pursed her lips. "I assume that you had some reason for consulting both of us."

He sighed. "In fact, I'd simply thought it fair that both of you know. But yes, I would like for you to accompany her, if you will." Another sigh. "I should have known it was too much to ask of Scott right now to cooperate with Erik, even by proxy of Raven."

"Erik had nothing to do with Jean's death."

"That wasn't what I meant."

"What did you mean, then?"

But the professor only shook his head. He kept people's secrets, and she wasn't offended because he would, in turn, keep hers just as tightly. Nodding to him instead, she rose from the red leather chair where she'd been sitting and headed out - to find Scott.

He wasn't in his office, nor in his suite, nor with Warren, who didn't appear to be on the mansion grounds at all today, though he was still sleeping in his suite. Ororo checked the Danger room, then the gym, both without finding him - which left only one place.

She headed outside. The day was chilly, but not overcast and she turned up her face to the sun. Soon, the winter clouds would roll in and it would be gray more often than not, so she always took a moment to enjoy the sun when she had it. It wasn't a long walk to the stable yard, and she was glad because she'd forgotten to nab a jacket.

Scott was exactly where she'd thought he might be - racing Farolisa around the barrels. Pausing at the white wooden fence, she admired the fusion of man and horse as they took a tight turn at the far end, then exploded back across the yard like a startled cat. Pulling up at the gate, Lisa's hooves sprayed loose dirt all over Ororo's high-heeled pumps and Ro had to shake them clean, trying hard not to look irritated. "Sorry," Scott said. At least he didn't remind her to wear shoes in the yard, though she should have remembered. His horse had accidentally stepped backwards onto her sandaled foot once. She'd limped for days and Jean had told her she was lucky the toes hadn't been crushed.

"Has Warren forgiven you yet for barrel racing a registered Andalusian?" she asked him instead.

"He got over that a while back," Scott said. "She's built for agility exercises - a compact little muscle machine, whether it's performing piaffe, making tempi changes - or racing barrels."

Ororo smiled even though she had no idea what Scott had just said. He fell into horse-speak now and then, which she just pretended to follow. She also kept her distance from the animal. Despite having lived for a decade in Westchester County - where one could hardly throw a rock without hitting a horse barn - horses made her nervous. They were _big_, and she hadn't spent enough time around them to understand their behavior. Scott knew that, and had dismounted so he could come closer, resting his arms atop the gate. The mare blew, her breath misting in the air, then pranced around a bit without getting very far from Scott - and not simply because he still had the reins in his grip. That horse followed him about like an oversized dog, and the affection was returned in full. Ororo had been told that, for the first two nights after Alkali, Scott had slept in Farolisa's stall - the only place he could sleep, apparently.

"You come to tell me I'm being unreasonable?" he asked her now.

"Are you?"

That made him laugh, short and sharp, but genuine. "We could get those records without Mystique."

"Yes, we could. If we could find them."

He clenched his jaw and didn't reply. The late afternoon sun slanted through the bare branches of the oaks and birch marching along the side of the white fence that contained Scott's white horse - though he'd told her (more than once) that the proper term was "gray." Ororo didn't care about proper terms. That horse was white - though the first time Ororo had seen her, a yearling with big red bows tied to her halter, she'd been as dark as mud - Warren's $25,000 birthday present to Scott five years before. And who would have guessed horses could change color so dramatically? She still had some dappling on her rear end, and a dark muzzle, but otherwise, she was _white_.

"We don't need Mystique," Scott said finally.

"Not if we had Cerebro still, no. I am going to accompany her - assuming the professor is correct and she will agree to retrieve the files."

Both his eyebrows hopped, and he took a step back from the gate. "I thought you were on _my_ side?"

"Really, Scott - that sounds childish. Would you prefer that she go after the files with no one to keep an eye on her? I do not like this any more than you, but as you said - the professor is going to ask her regardless. Our choices, then, are limited."

He looked off towards his horse, clicking his tongue. Farolisa came, shoving her muzzle against his neck and nibbling his hair. "Quit that," he scolded, but the words lacked heat and Ororo suspected the mare continued to do it because she knew that he secretly liked it. Looking back finally, he asked, "Do you want me to go, too?"

"It is not necessary, but I would not object - if you can keep your cool."

He glared. "What makes you think I can't?"

"Because every time Magneto's name comes up in conversation you cease to act like the Cyclops I know and leap to unsubstantiated conclusions."

His chin went up and his posture stiffened. "I did fine against Magneto at the Statue - or at least as fine as anyone else."

"Scott, you told me to 'blast him' when we were inside the head. Even I knew better - and so would you. Normally."

Turning away, he stroked his horse's neck, seeming at once angry and . . . defeated. His shoulders had slumped. "You're telling me I have no business in command, aren't you? After the Statue. After Alkali." The words were bitter, but not accusing, or not accusing of her. She suspected this was something he'd been telling _himself_ for the past six weeks.

"I said nothing of the kind," she replied now, sharply, and he glanced up, face blank. "After the incident at the train station, you did not hesitate to tell me that my own hesitation had nearly gotten me killed. And after the Statue, you drove all of us in the Danger Room every day for three weeks until I wanted to strangle you. But I knew you were correct to work us each on our weaknesses. And normally, you are the first to admit your own.

"So do not make more of my words than I meant by them. You are still my commander. But I am telling _you_ the weakness that _I_ see - you must cease to _react_ when Magneto is involved, rather than _act_. I dare say we have not seen nor heard the last of him yet - and not only because the professor means to ask for Mystique's assistance."

He pulled at the back of his hair. "After everything, you'd still follow me in the field?"

"Yes," she replied without hesitation, then let her lips tip up. "Besides, you fly better than I do." That made him laugh a little. "But what is it about Magneto?" she asked finally. "Why does he get such a rise out of you?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

And Ororo flinched at his tone, at once embarrassed for having pried, but also hurt that he wouldn't tell her, though he knew her own story, or at least part of it. He'd been there when she'd been rescued.

Seeing her reaction, he relented. "It was a long time ago. I knew Erik before I knew Charles." And Ororo didn't miss that he was suddenly using real names. "Erik's the reason I came here in the first place. But I'm not grateful to him, and I'd rather forget why."

"But when you see him again, you cannot."

"Something like that," he agreed, frowning down at the dirt.

"As you say - it was a long time ago."

"I know. I should be over it."

She shrugged. She could tell him she understood - and she did - but that wasn't what he needed to hear. Jean had sympathized with him, Warren protected him, and the professor sometimes coddled him. She, however, respected him enough to do none of those things. "Then _get_ over it, Cyclops."

Turning, she left him there with his horse.

* * *

Jubilee flung herself down sideways across one of the den chairs, back against one arm and feet draped over the other. "So, like, we live in a haunted mansion now." Kitty moved out of the way of Jubilee's feet.

They were seated around the coffee table in front of the television, doing homework. "Come on, Jubes," Bobby admonished. "Get real."

"Well, how would you explain all the craziness then?" Jubilee asked. "Not that I'm happy about it. Personally, I wish Dr. Grey would go haunt her parents, or a hospital somewhere, or something. I mean, I'm getting _really_ tired of replacing windows."

"And how many windows have _you_ replaced?" Bobby asked, sarcastic with resentment. Rogue put a hand over his while Kitty kept her attention on her math problems. She found Jubilee's theatrics annoying sometimes.

Jubilee shot Bobby a bird. "The real question, I guess, is _who_ she's haunting - Mr. Summers . . . or Logan? Now that Logan's left, I guess we'll find out. If the haunting stops . . . ." She trailed off meaningfully.

"I doubt she'd be haunting Logan," said Piotr - Pete - as he came over to seat himself among them, and immediately, blood scalded Kitty's face for no good reason at all. She couldn't look up. "Dr. Grey and Mr. Summers were together a long time," he added.

"You _have_ heard of the seven-year-itch?" Jubilee asked, popping gum.

"Jubes, you were _there_," Bobby said, still irritated. "You saw how broken up Cyclops was -"

"Pete?" Rogue interrupted, "Do you think we have a ghost?" It diplomatically changed the subject, and Kitty doubted Rogue wanted to talk about Jean and Logan. If Logan had looked at Rogue the way he'd looked at Jean, Kitty didn't think Bobby would have a prayer. Of course, to Kitty's mind, anyone who'd pick Cigar-stinky Logan over Mr. Summers-of-the-amazing-cheekbones was crazy.

"I don't know," Piotr said now, opening his own books. "It's hard to say. I mean, maybe it's just one of us with a power we aren't aware of yet. Or maybe not."

"There's no such thing as ghosts," Bobby insisted, swiveling his head to look over at the only adult currently in the room - the funny, big man, Dr. McCoy, who was reading the paper. "There's no such thing as ghosts, is there, Dr. McCoy?"

"To quote Hamlet, who knew something of ghosts," Dr. McCoy said from behind the paper, "'There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'"

This reply seemed genuinely to confuse Bobby. "What's _Shakespeare_ got to do with it?"

McCoy dropped one corner of his paper and grinned over the top of it. "Science may tell us how - but poetry tells us _why_, Robert. The human race is poorer without a little poetry in our soul, and a few ghosts in the attic." He flicked the paper back up. "That said, I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation - which may even involve ghosts. Just because it involves ghosts doesn't mean it's not reasonable."

That shut them all up for a full minute, digesting such an unexpected response from the guy who was, by all accounts, the ultimate science geek. Once again, Rogue sallied into the breach to ask, "Your dad's a priest, isn't he, Pete?"

"Yes," Piotr replied without looking up from his Psych text. "So?"

Kitty's head jerked up. Piotr's father was a _priest_? She hadn't thought priests could _marry_. "Think he might could do some kind of, I don't know, exorcism?" Rogue continued. "That's a Catholic thing, ain't it?"

Piotr laughed. "We're not _Catholic_, Rogue. We're Russian Orthodox - or really, OCA - the Orthodox Church in America. As for exorcisms, they're still done, but it's not exactly common and they usually involve demonic possession - not ghosts."

"Russian Orthodox priests can marry?" Kitty asked, curiosity overcoming her shyness.

He smiled at her, it was his special smile - or that's how she thought of it, subdued and gentle. "There are two kinds of clergy in the Orthodox church - white clergy and black clergy. White clergy marry; black clergy don't. Celibacy is considered a special vocation to which only a few are called."

This new revelation about Piotr's family gave Kitty something to think about. She'd known he wasn't Jewish, but this . . . it seemed that everything was against them - age, religion, academic interests. (Piotr struggled in the sciences; Kitty had no interest in the arts.) What would the son of a priest want with a nice Jewish girl?

"Do your parents know you're a mutant?" Bobby asked now, curious.

"Yes, they know."

"What do they think?"

"That God gave me a special gift and it's my job to use it for holy work."

Bobby blinked. So did the rest of them. "They don't, uh, call you an abomination or anything?"

Piotr set down his book and looked seriously at Bobby. "My father explains it this way - down the centuries, God has granted special gifts to those of whom he expects great things - saints, martyrs, sure, but other men, too. There's a reason I was born this way; I just have to figure out what vocation God has for me - and remain humble about it. It's a gift, and I'm God's servant."

"You sound like that new guy, Mr. Wagner," Jubilee said, but not dismissively.

"_Herr_ Wagner," Kitty corrected automatically.

"_What_ever," Jubilee replied. "Herr . . . Mr. - it's the same thing."

"It's polite to use the honorific he wants."

"Oh, man, you are _so_ anal. Is that a Kitty thing or a Jewish thing?"

Kitty's head came up, and everyone else's too. "What?" Jubilee asked, though her expression showed clearly that she knew she'd crossed a line. "She _is_ Jewish. I didn't mean it _that_ way."

"What way is 'that'?" Kitty asked.

"_Nothing. _Ever since Alkali, you're so damn sensitive! I was just making a joke."

Kitty slammed her math text shut and stood, almost shaking from a rage that she neither understood nor could control. It came bursting out of her, long suppressed and all denied. The entire den had gone quiet - not just around the coffee table where they were working, but over near the foosball table, too, and even Dr. McCoy had dropped his paper to watch.

"Now you listen here," Kitty said. "You think you're so cool, but you're really just a Chinese _Bridget Jones_ who says the first stupid thing that pops into her head. Yeah, maybe I don't know how to put on make-up like you, and I don't give a rat's ass about fashion, and I don't have a boyfriend, but when we grow up, you know what? I'm going to have a job that makes a hundred grand a year and you're going to be flipping burgers at McDonalds."

Jubilee looked too astonished to be angry - yet. Instead Rogue tried to intervene again. "Kits, she didn't mean nothing by it. Really. Sit down, hon -"

"You're no better! You act all grown up because you flew the X-Jet and get to call Logan your friend. But you'd two-time Bobby in a minute if Logan snapped his fingers in your direction. You're just uneducated, trailer-park trash." Kitty turned then to Bobby, who was gaping in frank shock. "What do you _see_ in her, anyway? Just the big boobs and skanky clothes from Wal-Mart? Boys are so stupid. They only care about how girls _look_."

Piotr was staring along with the rest, but she couldn't meet his eyes - and she had nothing to say to him. Her crush stopped her tongue. Instead, she clenched her fists. "I'm so tired of you all thinking you're better than me because you're older, or prettier, or whatever. Yeah, so I'm a geek, I actually take school seriously, and if I was in a normal high school, I wouldn't get asked to the prom, but at least I've got a _brain_!"

Abruptly, all her rage drained away, leaving her with the results of her outburst. She'd just alienated both roommates and her roommate's boyfriend, and done so in front of the one guy in the mansion who stole her breath. All of them were gaping at her as if she'd grown a second head.

"Go to hell," she said just to cap it off, and grabbing her books, stormed through the door that led outside, plopping down on the front porch, her books tumbling beside her. She sobbed once, unsure what to do now, and curled in on herself. She'd never spoken to anyone like that in her life. Talk about burning bridges. She wasn't even sure why she'd blown her top. Jubilee said a lot of things that she didn't mean, or didn't mean badly, anyway. Kitty knew that. And Rogue had just been trying to keep the peace. But Kitty was so _tired_ of pretty Rogue and perky Jubliee getting all the attention from the boys, then coming to her for help with the homework they'd forgotten to do.

"I am _so_ stupid," she muttered, wiping at her eyes. What would the professor do when he heard about it?

The door opened behind her and she jumped like a hare, spinning around to look. But it was just Dr. McCoy. He smiled at her and sat down on the steps beside her, forearms resting on his drawn up knees. He didn't say anything and Kitty hugged her own knees to her chest. "Okay, yeah - all that was pretty mean, I know."

He grinned, but still didn't say anything.

"Why are the pretty girls always the popular ones? I mean, are boys really that dumb? Piotr was over there because _Jubilee_ was."

And that, if she let herself look at it, was the real problem. Rogue had Bobby, and Jubilee could have Piotr if she'd wanted. But who'd look twice at _her_? She was just one of the boys.

"They tell me you're interested in science," Dr. McCoy said.

"Yeah," Kitty said.

"So was she."

"She who?"

"Another brainy girl I knew who asked the same questions. She wasn't Jewish, but she did have reddish hair, like you, and she used to complain she was a big, tall Amazon who the boys never looked at, either. Until one day a boy looked, and he never stopped looking."

Kitty was curious in spite of herself. "Who was that?"

"Dr. Grey."

She was astonished. "Dr. Grey! But she's - she was - _gorgeous_."

"Yes, she was. But not when she was fifteen. She grew into herself." He smiled over at her and, reaching out, tipped up her chin. "I think you'll be very pretty someday, too. Just remember there are all kinds of pretty, and don't stop loving quantum mechanics, okay? Brainy is sexy."

Frowning, she pulled away. "No, it's not."

"To some of us, it is."

She blushed. He was funny, and not really handsome, but his assurance . . . she liked it. She liked him. He was hard not to like, and if she didn't believe him that she'd be pretty someday - never like Dr. Grey - if she turned out half as self-assured as he was, that might be okay.

She would have said something more, except the door opened again - and this time, it was Piotr. She flushed hard and frowned down at her feet, grateful for the dark. McCoy glanced from her to Piotr, and grinned with that annoying, adult _knowing_ look, then got to his feet. "I do believe I'm a third wheel," he said, and went back inside. Piotr sat down on the steps where McCoy had been.

"You think I'm crazy, don't you?" she said in a small voice.

He didn't reply for a while, then said, "Everyone was a little . . . confused. Jubilee knows what she said was out of line. She didn't mean to hurt your feelings, but what you said - well . . . ."

"It was out of line, too, I know." Reaching up, she scrubbed at her eyes. They'd started tearing again. "They hate me, don't they?"

"They're angry, but I don't think they hate you. Everybody's been on edge lately. Stress does funny things."

"I'm just . . . I get so tired of Jubilee getting to say anything she wants, and we all forgive her for it. But me? Forget it."

He frowned, "Kitty, that's not true -"

"Yes, it is! Jubilee - she says stupid stuff and people just shrug and say, 'Well, that's Jubilee.' They don't care; they think she's _charming_. But if _I_ said stuff like that, they'd hate me. I'm supposed to be 'nice Kitty.' I don't always feel nice!"

"'Nice' isn't bad, y'know. Didn't it occur to you that some of us get tired of Jubilee mouthing off?"

Kitty gaped. "What? But - but you _like_ Jubilee. You're always hanging around where she is."

For three breaths, Piotr just stared, then burst out laughing. "Jubilee? You're kidding?"

Kitty stared back. "You don't like her?"

"I like her fine - as a friend. Jubilee's not my type." Reaching over, he ruffled her hair. "Look, I'd rather not pretend okay? I know you have a crush on me. And . . . I'm flattered. Can't imagine what a smart girl like you sees in a dumb guy like me, but you're only fifteen."

Her heart spasmed once, then settled down to a solid thumping as the pain hit. She couldn't seem to breathe, finally stuttering out, "That's just three years. Between us, I mean."

"Three isn't so much," he agreed, "when you're in your twenties. But when we're in our twenties, you won't be looking at me, Kitty. You were right earlier; you're going to _be_ somebody, get some fancy job and wind up with 'Dr.' in front of your name. You _will_ make a hundred grand a year. Me, I'll be a construction worker and draw my pictures on the side. You don't belong with somebody like me." He pointed over his shoulder. "You belong with a guy like Dr. McCoy who's real smart and can keep up with you."

Her mouth hung open to hear him talk about himself that way. "Piotr, you're an _artist_ - a real artist. You're going to be someone, too! And you're the nicest guy I know." She made a face. "Brains aren't everything."

"But they are something," he said. "And you have them - be proud of that, okay? Someday I'll get to say, 'Hey, I knew her when -'" He smiled that sweet smile of his and nudged her with his elbow, and part of her heart was breaking for her, but another part was breaking for him. How could _Piotr_ think so little of himself?

"When the soldiers came, you saved us," she blurted. "You led us. We felt safe with you."

And he blushed. "I just did what had to be done."

"Yeah - exactly." Reaching out, driven by the need to make him see himself the way she did, she gripped his upper arm. "You did what had to be done. And you weren't scared."

"I was terrified, Kitty."

"You didn't act like it."

"I couldn't. The rest of you needed me to be like Cyclops."

"And you were. Even better than Cyclops. Even better."

He stared back at her. "You really think so?"

"Yes." She grinned brightly, and, after a moment, he answered it.

Then he stood. "Come on. Let's go apologize to your roommates before Jubilee thinks of something really nasty to do in revenge for calling her Bridget Jones."

She let him pull her up. His earlier admonishment about age seemed to be lost for the moment. "They hate me, I'm sure of it."

"They're pissed off, but they'll get over it. And so will you. Now come on." She gathered her books while he opened the door.

"You really don't like Jubilee?" she asked as he held the door for her.

He rolled his eyes. "Man, _where_ did you get that crazy idea? No, I don't. And I suspect Jubilee would rather drink sour milk than go out with me."

"Not if she saw you without your shirt on."

And that had just . . . popped out. Eyes wide, she slapped a hand over her mouth, but he was grinning with amusement. "Now, who was complaining earlier that boys only care about how girls look?"

"I didn't mean it!" Well, actually, she had meant it, but - "Your chest isn't your main attraction." And that was, if possible, even worse. She slapped her hand over her eyes now. He, however, was just laughing at her.

"And your chest isn't your main attraction, either, Pryde. There - are we even?"

It was such an unbelievably cheeky thing for him to say that it shocked her out of her embarrassment. "You!" She smacked his arm in play. "And you're the son of a priest!"

Later, Kitty would look back on that night as the turning point in her life at the mansion. For the first time, she'd fought with her friends - and made up - and she'd made a friend of the boy she'd heretofore barely been able to string together three coherent words in front of.

But most of all, she'd remember that night for what she found in her room when she got back. Pictures - spread out all over her bed, probably twenty or more. They were of Dr. Grey, but not Dr. Grey as Kitty had known her. This was Dr. Grey when she was young - an Amazon indeed, with big elbows and wrists and a jutting jaw, freckles, glasses, and limp, auburn hair. But Kitty could still see the beauty she'd eventually become. Dr. McCoy had been right; she'd just needed to grow into herself. In one picture, she was sitting with a sulky-looking boy who Kitty thought looked a little like Mr. Summers, except he wasn't wearing glasses, and he had the most amazing blue eyes she'd ever seen. He and Dr. Grey didn't look like lovers; they just looked like friends.

She assumed that Dr. McCoy had left the pictures for her, but when she asked him about it at breakfast the next day, he said, "Pictures? No, I didn't leave any pictures in your room."

So Kitty asked her friends, and then the adults, yet none of them had left the pictures. She went to Mr. Summers last, after math class, handing him the pictures. "I think these are yours."

He took them, thumbing through the bunch. "God, I haven't seen these in years. Where'd you find them?"

"Someone left them on my bed, after, well, um - I kinda yelled at Jubilee and Rogue last night."

He glanced up. "I heard."

"Yeah, I guess everybody's kinda heard by now."

He held up a picture of Jean. "You don't know who left these?"

"No. I asked around, but nobody seems to know."

He stared at the picture a long time. In it, Dr. Grey (well, Jean, then) was holding up a trophy like she'd won an Oscar. "She got that for some science contest. It was before we even met."

A little shy, Kitty pointed to the one that she thought might be the two of them together. "Is that you?"

He bent to peer at it. "Yeah. That was taken . . . a couple months after I first got here, I think." He glanced up at her. "I wasn't much older than you, in that picture."

Kitty touched another that was just Dr. Grey alone. "She was pretty, even then."

"Yes, she was." His voice cracked, and he was swallowing convulsively, trying not to cry.

"I'm sorry," Kitty said. "I know you miss her." At a loss for anything else to say, she hurried off. She still didn't know who'd left the pictures, but suspected Dr. McCoy, whatever he'd said. It was a little too pointed and personal for their mansion ghost.

* * *

Mystique paused on the front porch of Xavier's mansion. This was the first time she'd stepped inside while looking even remotely like herself, if minus the blue. She'd adopted a form that might have been hers, had she been born "normal" - not because she was ashamed (not here), but because she didn't want to deal with teenagers and their simplistic assumptions about "Mystique, the enemy." Ringing the bell, she waited for someone to answer. A young boy opened the door, perhaps all of fourteen. She gave him her most charming smile. "Hello. Would you please tell Dr. Xavier that Dr. Darkholme is here to see him, as per our appointment?"

"You're a doctor?" the boy stammered, looking her up and down.

The smile hardened slightly. If a part of her enjoyed the disbelief in people's voices as they tried to reconcile the leggy knockout with "Dr. Darkholme," another part despised them for their puerile minds. "Yes," she said. "I'm a doctor - of the Ph.D variety."

The boy opened the door wider and stepped aside so she could enter. "Okay. I'll, uh, go let him know. You can sit over there." He pointed to an antique bench in the main foyer - so trusting, even after everything that had happened to these children. Charles really needed to work on that. Sighing, she took the bench, pretending to ignore the parade that came to see the stranger, even as she studied each student. Such a rich cache of talent here. Surely John Allerdyce wasn't the only one dissatisfied with Xavier's blind dream. She crossed her legs to show a lot of thigh, for the boys.

Finally an adult arrived - the Storm Queen. She stopped across from Raven, hands on hips, lips tight. "Raven?" she asked.

"Ororo," Raven replied in both acknowledgment and greeting.

"How's _John_?" the weather witch asked, pointedly.

"John's just fine. He doesn't send his regards."

Snorting delicately, the other woman made an imperious gesture with her hand and Mystique was amused more than annoyed. She liked keeping Storm off guard. Together, they entered Xavier's office, Mystique relaxing her form back into her real self even as the door shut behind them.

Twenty minutes later, they emerged, Mystique far less amused. She didn't bother with her disguise, barely noticing that the hallway was conveniently empty. Ororo had followed her out and at the front door, Raven turned. "I'll call you as soon as I've found out what office has the files. Bring whatever you think you'll need - but leave your biases behind. This is a job, understand? I don't like you, you don't like me, but we can still use each other."

"What if Scott - Cyclops - came along?"

Raven barely resisted sneering. "We have no need for your pretty jake."

"My . . . who?"

Raven just rolled her eyes. "The simpering idiot with the visor. Whatever Xavier thinks of him - or Erik, for that matter - he'll just get in our way. Any balls he may have been born with were cut off when he was selling his ass on the street."

The expression on the weather witch's face was _priceless_, and slowly, Raven smiled. "You didn't _know_, did you?"

"What are you talking about?"

"That's how Erik met him - he was sucking cock for a living down on Avenue B." Turning on her heel, she exited the front door and headed down the steps, still smiling as she re-assumed her cover image. How ironic that she, mistress of many faces, had to be the one to unmask theirs.

* * *

It had taken time for Hank's samples to run and the sequencing to be complete, but on the same Friday afternoon that Mystique visited the mansion, Hank's final results were in. He spent some time assembling them, just to be sure of what he was looking at, then took them upstairs to Charles. He'd considered calling everyone together but - in light of what he'd found - wasn't sure that was wise.

"I know what the results say," he told the professor as he laid down printouts on Xavier's desk. "I just don't know what they _mean_ exactly, in the larger sense."

Hank watched Xavier sort through the data, finally looking up and waiting silently for Hank to continue. "The first graphs," Hank said, "are DNA samples of Jean, Scott, Ororo, Rogue, and Logan, all taken before the first encounter with Magneto. The second set of graphs are DNA samples of the same people - plus Senator Kelly - taken after. If you notice, Logan's DNA hasn't changed at all. I suspect that's a function of his mutation. Any changes would have been 'healed.' The same is true of Rogue, since, as I understand it, she absorbed Logan's healing factor in order to survive. Thus, her DNA also reverted to its original.

"The rest are where changes occur. While I have nothing to compare Kelly's to, I think it would probably signify the greatest divergence, as Magneto's machine was designed to activate the X-gene in non-mutants. Yet, as Jean explained it to me, the machine supposedly had no effect on _mutants_.

"These results show that to be patently false. The degree of change, however, varies. If you look at both Scott and Ro's results, their DNA _has_ changed, but not significantly. While DNA is like a genetic thumb-print, it's possible to effect minor changes in that thumb-print without affecting its use for identification. Scott before and Scott after are still very obviously the same person - but there are subtle shifts. We see the same with Ororo.

"The exception is Jean herself. The changes to Jean's DNA are dramatic. It's still recognizably hers - enough key markers remain the same - but it shows major changes. I can't explain why that's the case, but my _suspicion_ is this**:** Jean's mutation never completed itself because she was forced to manifest too early. Unlike most mutants, she manifested _before_ puberty as the result of the death of her friend, Annie Richardson. Her body, quite simply, wasn't ready. Ergo, her mutation never finished until Magneto's machine reawakened her X-gene." Leaning over Xavier's desk, Hank pointed to Jean's 'after' graph. "She became, in the wake of the Statue incident, what nature intended her to be all along."

Xavier had listened to this in silence, but as Hank reached his conclusion, he sighed almost imperceptibly. "And what _did_ she become?"

"Something much more powerful than the Jean we knew."

"And that's why you made this a private meeting?"

Hank nodded. "I'm not at all sure what the upshot of this could mean." He pushed himself away from the desk to pace in front of it. "Think, Charles. You're a telepath - have you given any thought to what death might be like for you? I know you believe in an afterlife of some sort. Do you think your mutant gift might allow you to . . . stay in touch with the ones you've left behind?"

Apparently, it wasn't something Xavier had ever considered. "Even if I could," he said slowly, "I don't believe I would. I wouldn't be beneficial to the survivors."

And Hank had to smile, then came back to lean against the desk, arms folded. "That's the psychologist talking. You might know enough to make that choice. But Jean didn't."

Xavier frowned. "What are you suggesting, Henry? That Jean -"

"- is still around, yes. I'm not sure the kids' jokes about ghosts are that far off the truth. And that's why Scott isn't here. If he heard this, I have no idea how he'd react. Unlike Scott, I _don't_ think Jean was ready to die, even while she made the necessary sacrifice.

"A few nights back, I had a chat with my mother about ghosts, and one thing she emphasized is that - in many of these manifestations - the dead person is confused. They're not sure they're _dead_, and have to be convinced to move on. But in this case, we don't just have a ghost, we have a mutant telepathic ghost who died suddenly and left behind an intensely grieving spouse with whom she'd been having some relationship difficulties beforehand."

He paused to catch Xavier's gaze and hold it. "I think she's trying to communicate with Scott, Charles - and she's not going to leave us alone until she does."

Xavier didn't laugh. In fact, he appeared thoughtful. "You know - I think you may be right."

And that caught Hank a bit off guard, but the professor continued. "Only a few days after we returned, I experienced a . . . sensation, almost like a mental touch, that had Jean's flavor. I wondered about it, yet as it happened only once and never again, I dismissed it as my own imagination. Up until the day of the funeral, in fact, I thought Scott to be the one creating the chaos, then blacking out about it later. But now? I have no explanation for what's happening. The Jean whose touch I felt on the Blackbird was certainly hundreds of times stronger than the girl I taught - and I do believe our souls live beyond death. If her soul had 'unfinished business,' could it now be trying to correct that? And if so, the real question is - what do we do next?"

Sitting down in one of the leather chairs in front of Xavier's desk, Hank lowered his chin and folded his hands. "Don't laugh but - a seance?"

"A seance?"

"If communicating with Scott is what she wants, then let her. Once before, you acted as the medium. Are you willing to try again? If she can reach some kind of closure with him, then maybe she can move on. And so can he."

The professor was shaking his head. "Henry, as creative as that is, I don't think it will work for the simple reason that I don't seem able to sense her presence. At the times when her 'ghost' - or whatever it is - has been active in the mansion, I detected _nothing_ telepathically."

"But you just said you thought you felt her once -"

"Yes, once. I _thought_ I sensed something that 'felt' like her, but it lasted only a moment and has not come since. So while I'm not inclined to rule out the possibility of a ghost, at the same time, I don't seem able to sense it, much less communicate with it. My telepathy extends only to living minds - and active living minds. I cannot sense those too deeply unconscious, either."

"So you couldn't do it?"

"I don't think so, no."

Unexpectedly stymied, Hank bent over, elbow on knee, chin in hand. "So what do _you_ think we should do?"

"Wait and see what happens next, I suppose." And he looked as frustrated as Hank felt. "But I don't think we should tell Scott - or Warren - about this theory until we have more data. Scott's 'task' in grieving over the next several months is to let Jean go, not cling to her. Even if this is her ghost or spirit, _Jean_ is dead. If we could find some way for her to 'speak' to him, then she might be able to help him say goodbye, but otherwise, I fear he will simply . . . obsess, which will do him no good at all."

Hank thought Xavier was probably right about Scott's reaction, but he was reluctant to keep the truth from his friend. Yet was there any 'truth' here beyond the fact that Jean's mutation had been further triggered? "I think we should at least tell him, and Ororo, how Magneto's machine altered their DNA, and Jean's. It might give him an explanation for what was happening to her in the last month. I know he's been troubled by that. We don't have to tell him any theories."

"And if he reaches them on his own?"

Hank shrugged. "Scott's a 'Show me' kinda guy. He should have been born in Missouri."

Xavier nodded. "Very well then. Tell them."


	12. Pieces

"Now listen up, guys. The key to teamwork in the Danger Room is to watch your _partner's_ back; that way you don't have to worry about your own - got it?"

The four students in front of Cyclops nodded solemnly, and as she observed them, Storm experienced a peculiar maternal moment. This wasn't their first time in the room, but it was the first time they would face a real simulation, one she and Cyclops had prepared specifically for them - Piotr, or Colossus, Bobby, or Iceman, Rogue, who used her codename everywhere, and Jubilee, who, like Jean, didn't seem to have acquired any name besides her own.

Cyclops stepped back beside Storm into the 'safe' section of the Danger Room. "Armor-up Colossus. Student Training Session One - begin."

And the rest of the enormous dome transformed into a city alleyway - parts of the floor erupting up or the walls moving in to form building walls, stairs, balconies, and windows, like a larger version of the 3-D map in the War Room. The kids were paired across gender lines, into long- and short-range fighters. Scott hadn't been eager to put Rogue and Iceman together because he feared that their relationship outside the Danger Room might affect their performance in it.

"You and Jean fought as a team," Ororo had pointed out.

"That's exactly why I'm leery," Scott had replied. "And I'm older and colder than Bobby."

At the time, his words, 'older and colder,' had made her smile - but that had been before Mystique's revelation, before Ororo had stayed up until two, turning it all over in her mind and wondering if she should ask him about it, ask if it were really true. Except she knew it was true. It made too much sense on all kinds of levels**:** beautiful Scott who nonetheless held himself like a mannequin, stiff and awkward and covered in clothes to conceal his body; standoffish Scott who wore personal space like plate armor; cool Scott who rarely let anyone get close to his heart. She'd never fully understood those aspects (except maybe the last). Now, she did.

Yet she had many questions. How long had he been out there? Was sex something he'd sold only now and then? He'd told her once that he'd hustled pool (not his body). So it couldn't have been that frequent, could it? How could he have survived, if it had been a regular thing?

"You okay?" Cyclops asked her now.

"What? Oh, I am fine. I'm fine. Why?"

"You looked distracted."

"Just . . . concerned."

"Worried. You were going to say you're worried."

"Perhaps, a little." She held up thumb and forefinger an inch apart and tried to smile, but feared it would look fake.

He studied her a moment, then said, "They'll do all right. They'll get their asses handed to them, but that's the point. It'll sand some of the cocky off, then we can show them how to handle themselves out there."

Almost on the heel of that came a cry from Rogue and curses from Bobby.

"Must the lesson be so hard?" she asked.

"Life is hard," Scott replied philosophically.

And almost, she asked him then - 'How hard was it for you? How long did you have to live like that?' But she bit her tongue. This wasn't the time to distract him.

_(And did she really want to know? Did she really want to hear? Did she want to shame him that way? He hadn't told her before, and she couldn't blame him for keeping the truth to himself. How it must sear his pride, humiliate him to remember.)_

"Shit!" came from the floor - Jubilee's voice. "Pete! _Get_ it!"

"Colossus!" he yelled back.

"What_ever_!" Jubilee cried over the sound of her fireworks and Colossus' metal fists striking something. "Just fucking _get_ it already!"

Beside her, Cyclops resisted laughing. "You're enjoying this," Storm rebuked him.

"Maybe a little."

They waited another five minutes as the distress grew louder in the distance. Finally, she said, "Shall we go rescue them?"

"I think so."

Taking the alley one on either side, they found Rogue down and Iceman standing over her shooting ice bolts while Colossus shut down one of the several embedded (rubber-bullet) guns in the "windows" while Jubilee fried another. It wasn't half bad for a first attempt, but lacked organization, and they'd let one of their own go down, pinning them in the middle of fire.

With the ease of long-practiced teamwork, Cyclops and Storm made quick work of the concealed 'gang members' and Storm called, "End simulation."

The four trainees were wide-eyed in shock and panting from exertion - or pain in Rogue's case, from the bruise in her side where one of the rubber bullets had caught her. Storm ensured it wasn't serious while Cyclops called them all over. Colossus had gone back to his natural form. "Okay - assess your performance."

"We stunk," Iceman said bluntly.

"True," Cyclops said, "but what went wrong?" That reply seemed to shock them, but he shook his head. "Look, in the classroom, it's my job to pound some math and practical skills into your heads. I encourage you. But down here, it's my job to keep you _alive_. I'm not going to play nice. You screw up, I'll tell you. But it doesn't end there. Now _think_, guys. What went wrong?"

"We weren't expecting so many?" Colossus offered.

"That's error one - you 'expected' in the first place. Don't expect or assume - be ready for anything." Yet his tone was pedagogically matter-of-fact, not critical, which made it a lesson, not a censure. Scott was a natural teacher; something Ororo didn't think even he was fully aware of. "What else?" he asked.

The three still standing all tried to avoid looking at Rogue, who was blushing hard. "I'm no good at this kinda thing," she said softly. "I don't have any fighting power so I'm pretty much useless."

Pointing at her, Cyclops spoke harshly for the first time. "That's defeatist. I don't _ever_ want to hear those words out of your mouth again." She flinched, and Storm gripped her elbow in silent encouragement. "You won't always have a choice about fighting," he went on. "This simulation was nothing more than normal humans with guns and a serious hate on. Now forget what you did - what should you have done?" Silence, until Jubilee raised her hand. "Yes?" Cyclops said.

"Um, maybe we should have had Pete - Colossus - guarding Rogue? Then Bobby and I coulda hid and done our worst. Bobby was pretty exposed -"

"Good!" Scott said, interrupting her in his enthusiasm.

"But you said to guard our partner's back!" Iceman protested.

"Yes, I did - but you're a team of four. Reconfigure if it makes more sense, and it did in this case. _Improvise. _Colossus could have covered Rogue, getting her to safety while Iceman and Jubilee used their powers to take out the snipers. Both of them can hit two in the same time it takes Colossus to take out one because he has to _approach_.

"Don't lock yourselves up inside the rules. The only 'rule' in a life and death situation is to survive, and _use_ your distance fighters accordingly. Going in with both fists swinging is not always the most effective approach, whatever Hollywood would have you think, capisci?" They all looked at each other, then nodded. "In this case, Colossus was best used as defensive cover, not offensively. Now, there's one other major mistake you made. Anybody know what it was?"

They shuffled their feet and stared at the floor, and even Storm wasn't sure what Cyclops was getting at. Finally he sighed and said, "Always know your weak link. That was Rogue."

They blushed while Rogue lowered her eyes. Storm squeezed her elbow again, whispering, "Just listen."

"A team has to know the strengths _and weaknesses_ of all members," Cyclops explained. "Rogue can absorb any power - but in a situation like this, she has no natural defense and can't take your powers without weakening one of you. That means you get in and _protect_ her. She goes to the middle and the rest of you cover her. If one of you goes down, _then_ her powers come into play. And if you're facing a mutant adversary, her powers are invaluable. But in a situation like this, yes, she's a liability, at least at the outset. Be aware of that. It's not an indictment. It's realistic."

Seeing the surprise on all their faces - and the resistance - he said, "The worst thing you can do is 'nice' each other to the point it gets you killed. In the field, I have a liability, too - bad peripheral vision from the visor. My ability to track movement helps offset that, but my partner still has to watch my back _and_ my sides." Cyclops gestured to Ororo still sitting beside Rogue. "Storm's been working with me so long, it's second nature to her, and if she takes out someone who was coming for me at ninety-degrees, I don't get offended. It's her _job_ to know what I can - and can't - do. Iceman, as Rogue's partner, it's your job to watch when she's vulnerable, and it's this team's job to protect her. And Rogue" - he looked right at her - "you don't just put up with it, you _expect _it . . . just as they expect you to step in if one of them goes down, and protect them. That's an incredibly important role. You're the goose who lays the golden egg."

And the kids seemed more at ease now, finally understanding what he was getting at. "You did well," Storm told them. "For a first time."

"Yeah, but you two took out everybody in two minutes flat," Iceman muttered.

"We've been doing simulations like this for years," Cyclops told him.

"We also wrote the program," Storm added, grinning.

"That, too." And Cyclops' own grin broke through. "Now, go hit the showers. We'll see you tomorrow for normal exercises, and we'll have another simulation on Friday."

Their students filed out, Iceman helping Rogue, and Cyclops came to plop down on the floor beside Storm. When the door shut, he said, "Thoughts?"

"They did not want to hear that about Rogue."

"Of course not. That's why they needed to. What else?"

"Jubilee may become team leader."

"Yeah, that surprised me, too. And not."

"And not, as you said. Do you think she can do it?"

"If she can be serious long enough. She's a smart kid. I'd expected Bobby to take control, but he's been more diffident since Alkali, not less."

"What happened at his parents house has disturbed him."

"I kinda gathered that."

"You should talk to him."

"Me? I'm no good at that stuff." He didn't add what they both knew - normally, such a task would have fallen to Jean.

"He admires you," Ororo told him.

"Not compared to Logan."

Exasperated, she shook her head. "Yes, more than Logan. And please, Scott - it is not a competition."

Breathing out, he pushed himself to his feet, looking down at her as she looked up at him. "Slap on the wrist noted," he said.

Grinning, she offered her hand and he pulled her to her feet. "How do you feel about this?" she asked him as they headed for the door.

"About what?"

"This martial training. They are so young."

"So were we."

She made a dismissive gesture with her hand. "Sometimes I wonder if we ever were young, you and I." It came out sadder than she'd meant, but she was still thinking about a young boy lost on the New York street, a concrete angel who'd done what was necessary to survive.

He stopped just in front of the door and turned to face her, hands on hips, expression serious. "I want them to be kids - you know that. But I also want them able to protect themselves the next time someone comes after us. They all volunteered for this. Piotr badgered for it, in fact. You and me - we were . . . different, yeah. But maybe that's why I think this is important. I want them tough, not hard like us."

She studied his face, struggling to guess where his eyes were behind the visor. "We shall make them tough, then. And keep them from becoming hard."

"Yeah, we will." And they went out together.

* * *

Hands folded on the tabletop, Hank sat on one side of a lab table while Ororo and Scott were seated across from him, staring like a pair of deer in the headlights. Their DNA printouts were spread on the table between. "So - uh, what does all that mean?" Scott asked finally.

"Probably not much for you two. You might each try some experiments with your power, see if it's expanded at all. Don't expect major changes, though . . . or you'd already have noticed them."

"But for Jean?" Ororo asked, probably because Scott couldn't.

"For Jean, it meant that her mutation finished manifesting."

Scott stared at the table, his fingers splayed against the black surface. Finally, he cleared his throat to ask, "She knew this?"

"I suspect that she suspected it," Hank said softly. "She hadn't finished running the samples, so she didn't have the data yet. When something is happening to _you_, it can be hard to think about it logically. Nor is a cause of change always obvious."

"She told me it was Cerebro."

"Maybe she thought it was, for a while. But as she studied Kelly's DNA, she may have gotten a new idea. I believe she'd only begun to suspect a connection to Magneto's machine."

"So why are you telling us this?"

"I thought you might want to know."

Later that same day, Ororo cornered Hank in the staff kitchen, where he was wolfing down ice cream. "This really will not affect us?" she asked.

Looking up, mouth full of sweet, he had to swallow before he could reply, "Probably not much - but I do think it worth a little experimentation."

Coming over to lean into the sink, Ororo watched him eat. "If Jean truly did . . . change, could it have had more far-reaching consequences than just an amplification of her telekinesis?" She paused, studying her nails, then added, "Kurt believes she is haunting us."

There was a long silence punctuated by the clink of a spoon against the ceramic bowl. Finished finally, Hank set the bowl in the sink and said, "I'm not so sure she isn't. Don't tell Scott."

"He is not dense, Henry."

"No, he's not. But he also has an aversion to the supernatural."

"Is it supernatural if it is evolution? And what if she will not go away?"

Frowning, Hank shook his head minutely. "I don't know."

* * *

Logan toured Nagoya with a peculiar double-vision. There was the city today, and the city as he'd known it. Standing at the base of the hill looking up at Nagoya Castle, he'd had to blink, forcing himself to see it as it was now, not as it had been -

When?

The question haunted him. When had he last set foot in this city? How many decades ago? It had been quieter then, more formal, less Western - and there sure as hell hadn't been those two big round towers rising up from the city center. He'd come prepared with multiple maps, two phrase books, and a travel guide, but had tossed all within the first hour. His Japanese was rusty but fluent, startling even the locals, and the city . . . he didn't care where things were now. He cared where things had _been_.

But _when_?

When, when, when?

Cash wasn't a problem, between Xavier's assistance and his own savings, he had enough to see him through several months here, even at the exaggerated cost of living in a Japanese metropolis. His own needs were modest, but he bought some fine silk and lace gloves for Marie, along with a matching scarf. He hadn't forgotten Cyclops' words when he'd left - the kids didn't need another person giving up on them. He might be no good at letters, but the gloves would remind Rogue he was still thinking about her. In the same box, he added a video game earmarked for Bobby and the latest in text-messaging equipment for Artie (programmable to English). He also found some godawful big earrings for Jubilee - yellow, of course - and an extra-extra large shirt for Piotr with the Nagoya castle on it. Then he found other things to add for the rest. Before long, he needed a much bigger box. He even found gifts for the adults - another scarf for Ororo, a fine leather pipe holder for Xavier, a set of Buddhist prayer flags for Kurt, but nothing for Cyclops. Finally, he chanced upon a sextuple-stitched, heavy-canvas judogi. Purchasing it, he pinned a note to the white belt**:** "I ain't forgot. Still plan to kick my ass? You're the book guy, so go get a book on judo. Read up. We start when I get back."

But beyond the presents, he spent little time worrying about his immediate past. Instead, he walked the Nagoya streets, hands in pockets, letting the sights, sounds, and smells tease his mangled memory. Surely, at some point, he'd stumble over something familiar.

* * *

"The FBI does not have your files."

Xavier and the Storm Queen both looked at her in disbelief, but Mystique just shrugged where she sat in the same chair she'd occupied a little over a week ago to hear that the U.S. government might have acquired copies of all their mutant DNA, including hers. She'd been furious then - at Stryker, certainly, but furious at them, too, for being insufficiently paranoid, and thus, less careful than they should have been. She was still angry, but it burned lower now that she'd determined the data was not in the hands of the FBI, Homeland Security, or any other similar agency. "There's nothing there. I've checked everything, and no record of those files has surfaced in what was recovered from Stryker's lab."

"You're certain there is nothing -"

"Would I be sitting here saying so if I weren't certain?" she snapped, annoyed. "Be grateful. And I expect all that data to be encrypted at 20-48 bit in the future, Charles. That's not unbreakable. Nothing is unbreakable, but it's several magnitudes better than what Jean was using." She blew out softly. "I shouldn't have to tell you that."

"No one here has your level of expertise, Dr. Darkholme."

It was, Mystique thought, Xavier's way of thanking her, but he'd always been willing to grant even his enemies their proficiencies. She stood, shooting Storm a small smile. "You and I - we might have been a good team." Storm barely resisted screwing up her face in revulsion and Mystique made herself laugh, not sneer (in insult, hurt, or an answering distaste). Instead she looked back at Xavier. "You're not paranoid enough, Charles. When I first came here, your students let me in the door just because I said I had an appointment with you. I could have been anyone. And I spent my last week as a ghost in the FBI machine, looking for a file that should never have been found in the first place, after a break-in that should never have happened. And you wonder why John came with us. He believes we might actually _protect_ him."

Xavier's face hardened. "We both know why John went with you. Erik appealed to his teenage vanities and impatience. You won't make him safer; you'll throw him in the path of danger for your cause."

"We'll do nothing of the kind. He volunteered, Charles. He knows that nothing will change without action. There's calculated risk, and then there's foolish risk. Erik calculates. You _trust_."

Xavier gave a little shake of his head. "We've had this conversation before; there's little point in retreading it. We do appreciate your help, though. Good afternoon, Raven."

She shrugged with one shoulder and let herself out.

* * *

It had taken a month for Larry Trask to set up an appointment with Sebastian Shaw. Finding him hadn't been the problem. Unlike the faceless "Strife," Shaw turned out to be a well-known public figure and philanthropist, as well as a vocal supporter of the Mutant Registration Act and one-time generous contributor to Robert Kelly's campaign. Getting an _appointment_ with Shaw had been the problem, but finally, the man agreed to meet Larry in his rich corner office on Wall Street, not far from Ground Zero. One could see the empty place outside the window where the Twin Towers had once dominated the skyline. The furniture was Victorian antique from the teak-and-ebony inlaid jardiniere to the Queen Anne card table, from the rosewood cylinder secretary to a carved rosewood whatnot stacked with Davenport and Staffordshire china. "Thank you for seeing me," Larry said as he was ushered in.

Shaw smiled without it ever reaching his eyes and shook Larry's extended hand, then sat back down behind his teak desk, hands folded and elbows resting on the top, leaving Larry to take a seat in a matching teak armchair in front of it. He wasn't being overly friendly, but not outright rude, either. "How can I help you, Agent Trask?"

"My father - Assistant Director Bolivar Trask - died in the recent Blackout."

Shaw's eyebrows lifted slightly, but he showed no other interest. "I'm sorry."

"A man named Strife gave me your name. He said you were a . . . friend of Colonel Stryker's."

"I'm afraid I don't know any Mr. Strife."

- which neither admitted nor denied that he knew Will Stryker. Frustrated, Larry rubbed the bridge of his nose and looked around the office. No one else was in there, but that didn't mean it wasn't bugged. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. "Look, I don't believe what the president says - that the Blackout was all Stryker's fault - and this man, Strife, confirmed that. He said it was the direct result of an 'incredibly powerful telepath.' He also said the telepath is too well protected at the moment to be touched, but then gave me your name. He said you weren't involved in the fiasco at Alkali and weren't 'tampered with.'"

"_Tampered with_?" Shaw asked, clearly amused.

"Those were Strife's words." Larry sat forward just a little. "Look, Mr. Shaw, I want that telepath exposed, whoever he is. I want him brought to justice."

"Do you now?" Shaw said, slouching just slightly in his leather chair and bringing up fore and middle fingers to his lips. He was a handsome man in a dark way, with that look of hard power that compressed the skin around his eyes and mouth. "Assuming this man exists and is truly responsible for the Blackout, then I'm sure a lot of people would like to see him exposed and brought to justice."

Frustrated, Larry just glared back at Shaw, who didn't react at all, so Larry got to his feet. "If you know anything further, you have my number, sir. I'll show myself out."

He stalked to the door and shut it behind him - not quite a slam, but harder than it needed to be.

A door in the paneled wall of Sebastian Shaw's office opened and another man stepped out. He took the same seat that Trask had just vacated, one ankle crossed over his knee, fingers steepled. He was elegantly dressed with dark hair, black eyes, and a well-trimmed goatee. "Any use?" Shaw asked.

The other man shrugged and spoke in educated Queen's English. "Perhaps. It couldn't hurt to have a mole in the FBI - especially one unaware that he is a mole."

"How close are we to Green, Nathaniel?"

"A few months yet. These things can't be rushed."

Shaw rose up and went to his sideboard, but didn't make himself a drink, instead he walked to the glass wall and stared out to where the Trade Center had used to be. "Trask is a fool."

"No doubt."

"So why should we bring him in?"

"I told you, a mole in the Bureau might be useful."

"For what?"

"Ah, Sebastian. Accept an easy opportunity when it arises. It may be of no use at all, or it may be of great use. It's simply hard to say, at this point." He sat forward. "Do you have my files?"

Shaw glanced around to meet his eyes. "_Your_ files?"

"My payment, Sebastian. My files."

Shaw's smile was thin as he reached inside his suit jacket, drawing out a small CD in its jewel case. This, he tossed to the other man, who plucked it effortlessly out of the air. "That's everything Will found at Xavier's. But it's encrypted."

The man named Nathaniel studied the file label. "It shan't stay that way." He pocketed it and stood. "Expect delivery around . . . April, I believe."

"April!"

"I told you, Sebastian. These things can't be rushed. Or do you wish to kill the _whole_ human population?"

Shaw wrinkled his nose and turned away. "That would destroy the economy."

The other man laughed. "Always the pragmatist. And do take on Trask, old boy." Turning, he headed out the main door. "Give my regards to Emma, won't you?" The door shut behind him.

"Bastard," Shaw muttered to no one in particular.

* * *

"I know it's not pumpkin, but we never had pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving." Nervous, Rogue held out the plastic-wrap covered pie towards Madeline Drake, Bobby's mother. She'd tried to make it look home baked, though it had come from the bakery section at a local Stop & Shop supermarket. Rogue justified the deception by telling herself that she _could_ have baked a pecan pie if she'd had her mother's recipe - but like so much of her childhood, her mother's recipe (along with her mother) had been left behind in Meridian.

Smiling, Mrs. Drake made much of the pie, then said, "Come in, come in, I'm sure you both had a long ride. Marie, it's so nice to meet you finally; Bobby's told us so much about you."

And Marie - Rogue - had to pretend that she'd never met any of them before, had never seen the house, had never been to Boston. She hoped she didn't mess this up, but Bobby had seemed so desperate for company on his first time home after Alkali Lake, and if she were uncomfortable, she could only imagine how he must feel. He'd talked to his parents since - his parents who remembered nothing - but he hadn't been home, and she wondered how he was going to face Ronny, knowing what he knew. "I don't have to fake that we're buddy-buddy," Bobby had told her in the car on the way down. "We never really were."

So she'd come home with him for Thanksgiving Dinner despite her bad memories of this house, despite her anger at his parents and her disgust with Ronny, despite the potential for accidents with her deadly skin around people who didn't know not to touch it and couldn't be told. Bobby needed her, so here she was, putting on her best manners and grateful it was winter so she could wear long sleeves. She'd dressed up, too, making some excuse about "Southern expectations" but, like her hat, it was all just a cover to explain the necessary gloves. She'd been raised in the suburbs on the west side of Meridian, not in a house on the hill in Charleston or Savanna or Nashville, and her only claim to high society was that her mama had sold the mayor's son and his wife their most recent home. Whatever Kitty Pryde had said or thought, Marie D'Ancanto was thoroughly middle class. She bought school clothes every fall at Dillards and J. C. Penny's, not Wal-Mart, she didn't think tractors were sexy, and she didn't own any boots - or ball caps, either. She 'ma'am'ed the older women and 'sir'ed the older men because everyone did where she was from, but she preferred Lynyrd Skynrd to Charlie Daniels or Hank Williams (senior or junior). She liked catfish, and grits, and 'y'all' peppered her speech, but she was neither a redneck nor a Southern belle. She was just a modern Southern teen who drank Coke (not pop), rolled (not teepeed) her friends' houses, and wore her make-up a little too heavy for Northern tastes.

But the Drakes didn't know any of that, so she laid the accent on thick and they took it all at face value. She overheard Bobby's mother whisper to Bobby's father in the kitchen, "Isn't she just the cutest little thing? Like a young Scarlet O'Hara."

"As long as she doesn't flirt like Scarlet O'Hara," he replied as he poured himself more wine.

"Bill!" Mrs. Drake said in rebuke, but she sounded more amused than angry.

Everyone sat down to eat not long after Marie and Bobby arrived. Besides Bobby's immediate family, there was Bill Drake's divorced younger brother and the woman he was dating, plus a maternal grandfather in the early stages of Alzheimer's, and an older cousin who went to school at Boston College. "Jeff's eating dinner with us," Mrs. Drake explained, "because his family's too far away to go home for the weekend - just like you, Marie."

That had been, of course, Bobby's excuse for bringing her home with him - Meridian was too far to drive for a weekend. "But we've really got to head back on Friday," he'd warned as soon as they'd walked through the door. "I've got this _major_ project due next Tuesday -"

"Bobby's such a responsible student," his mother had interrupted, beaming at her brother-in-law (who Bobby had earlier told Marie was regarded as flighty). "I'm so proud of you, honey. But I do wish you and Marie could stay longer."

"Maybe next time," Bobby had said.

Later in the bathroom as they washed their hands before the meal, Bobby whispered to Marie, "She's so _proud_ of me. Yeah, right. We both know exactly how proud she'd be if she knew the real truth."

"Bobby," Marie said, half in sympathy, half in admonishment, and almost added, _At least they didn't kick you right to the curb along with the trash_. But she didn't. For her, it had been almost a year ago now. For Bobby, it was all still fresh and sharp. "It's gonna work out," she told him instead, mostly because she didn't know what else to say.

Shrugging, he brushed past her and went back into the formal dining room with its wood paneling and marble floors and nice china services placed neatly around the extended table. There was a lovely fall centerpiece on the runner down the middle with tall candles lit. Mrs. Drake was running in and out of the kitchen, carrying platters and bowls, while the men stood about talking football and drinking wine. Even Bobby had a glass, though Ronny (two years younger) didn't. Marie had iced tea, mostly because Mrs. Drake had assumed that's what she'd want (being Southern and all). She'd rather have had coffee, but didn't ask.

Ronny was helping his mother - and not, apparently, because he'd been ordered to. Marie had offered earlier, but been told, "You're our guest!" (Where she'd grown up, the guests were made to feel at home by giving them something to chop in the kitchen.) Finally all was ready and Bobby's father took the table head while his mother took the foot and the rest were seated in between.

The meal itself was nice, as long as Marie could forget her previous impressions - something that grew easier as the evening progressed and new impressions replaced the old. The Drakes weren't bad people, and she recalled a conversation she'd had with Mrs. McCoy a couple weeks before. "Adjustment takes time. Think about how long it took you to accept yourself, or Bobby to accept himself. Bobby's parents couldn't make that journey in less than an hour, much as Bobby might have needed them to that day." She'd patted Marie's gloved hand. "We parents are, unfortunately, human, too. We don't always do the right thing, though good parents try."

When the meal was over, Mrs. Drake hopped up to bring in the pies, including Marie's (store-bought) homemade pecan. While she was doing that, Ronny began collecting dishes, again without prompting from anyone. Bobby - engaged in a conversation with Jeff about college applications - just rescued his fork and took it for granted that Ronny would clear the table.

Ronny Drake, Marie decided, defied expectations, and the more she saw, the more curious she became. Taking only a small slice of dessert, she finished it quickly and excused herself to go to the restroom, but instead, slipped into the kitchen. There, she found Ronny scarfing down a huge slice of pumpkin pie while he sorted dishes in preparation for loading the dishwasher. He looked up when she entered. "Hey," she said.

"Hey," he said back, expression guarded. "You need something?"

"Uh, no." She twisted her fingers together. After the events back in October, she'd decided that if she ever saw Ronny again, she'd personally neuter him. Except he didn't remember anything about that day, and he was the brother who'd noticed when his mother needed assistance.

That was why she was here. "I, uh - well, I thought maybe I could help."

Mouth full of pie, he just blinked at her, then swallowed and said, "You're a guest."

"Yeah, well, where I'm from, we put the guests to work." She grinned.

He didn't. "Didn't you, like, have servants or something?"

"Servants?" She almost laughed, but wasn't that the impression she'd been striving for? "Nah, no servants. Here" - she came over to the sink and started filling one side with water - "how 'bout if I rinse and you load?" Then she tugged off her gloves. This was probably dangerous, but she was tired of being "the guest," and maybe, just possibly, another part of her wanted to reach out to Ronny _before_, wanted to make herself human to him _before_, so that _after_ - and _after_ was inevitable - he'd remember her as the girl who'd helped him clean up after Thanksgiving, not just a (freak) stranger Bobby had let into their house when the rest of them hadn't been home.

Now, finishing his pie, Ronny set aside the plate and shrugged. "Sure, fine." And they began, working in silence at first. After five minutes of that, though, Ronny asked, "So, what do you see in my geeky brother anyway?"

Marie grinned. "He's nice."

"Yeah, Mr. Sensitive probably would be, to a girl. And, uh, we'll wash the china separately. It doesn't go in the dishwasher."

"That's fine. And hey, you're the one in here doin' the dishes." She handed him a pot. "I think a lot of girls would like that - Mr. Sensitive." She shot him a grin to show she meant it kindly.

But Ronny frowned. The overhead track lights (very '80s, Marie thought) shown down on hair that was a little darker than Bobby's, and a little straighter. His eyes were hazel, too, not that brilliant blue that his brother sported. "Mom oughta be visiting with the company, not working like a dog in the kitchen. It's not like dishes are hard or anything."

She was silent a moment, thinking about how he'd put that. Ronny had a protective streak, and maybe that explained what he'd done the last time they'd been here. No, he didn't like Bobby, but Marie suspected there had been more to it than simple jealousy. She handed him a handful of serving spoons, careful not to touch his skin. "So what do you do, Ronny? Besides go to school, I mean. Got any hobbies?"

"I'm in the band - play french horn. Might try out for drum major next year."

"Cool. Our school isn't big enough for a band. Sometimes I miss stuff like that."

"I guess you're too busy with a _gifted_ curriculum."

Marie shot him a glance. "It's a lot of work, really." She thought of Cyclops and Storm's Danger Room simulations. "And there's all kinds of being 'gifted.' Don't compare yourself to Bobby, okay?"

"You sound like Mom."

"Well maybe she's right." She handed him serving dishes. "I never had a brother or sister. Always wanted one."

He snorted. "You only say that because you _don't_ have one."

"Maybe. Maybe not."

She was finished with the dishes that could go into the dishwasher and Ronny waved her away. "Go on back out there, or Mom'll wonder where you are. I'll get the china and stuff."

She smiled and dried her fingers, then pulled her gloves back on. "Okay. And it was nice to talk to you a little more, Ronny."

"Yeah," he replied, and if it was meant to sound gruff, it didn't quite succeed.

As Marie returned to the dining room, Bobby shot her a curious look. Later that evening, when they were talking alone in Bobby's room, she told him about her conversation with Ronny. His face blanched. "_Why?_" he asked from where he was standing beside his old desk. She was sitting on a corner of his bed. "After everything, why'd you go talk to _him_?"

"I was curious. And I thought, I don't know, that maybe it might make a difference. Later."

Shock transformed into angry lines of betrayal. "I'm never going to forgive him."

"Bobby, I think he was, um, I don't know - maybe just trying to protect your family."

Bobby's fair skin flushed red. "I'm his _brother_, Rogue. Turning me into the police is real protective!"

She dropped her eyes to her hands and squirmed a little on the comforter. "I know. I didn't say it was right. I was just . . . trying to understand it, I guess. Why he'd do that. Then maybe we can stop him from doing it next time."

"There's not going to be a next time," Bobby snarled.

"Bobby, you're gonna have to tell them -"

"No, I don't! There's no reason I have to tell them."

Still looking at her hands, she tilted her head. "As long as you don't tell them, you're just gonna remember the last time, and hate them for it. And they won't know why you hate them. You'll never know how they'll react till you try again."

His jaw was clenched and his fists were on his hips; his posture looked a lot like Cyclops. "What makes you think their reaction would be any different now?"

"Different situation."

"Oh, come on, Rogue. You've met them now. You see how_ conventional_ they are."

"I see that your mom thinks you hung the stars, and that your dad is pretty proud of you, too - that's what I see, Bobby. The last time we were here, we were in trouble and running, and they were scared, but they were _trying_. Trying more than my parents did, okay?" And she hadn't expected either the anger behind her words, or the tears that pricked the corners of her eyes.

But he was still angry, too, and he turned away. "I've known them longer than you."

"Yeah, well, there's such a thing as being too close to it." She stood up from the bed and grabbed the overnight bag that she'd left upstairs earlier. "I'm going to bed, Bobby. Good night."

He didn't reply as she walked out and shut the door behind her. It was only much later, as she climbed into bed in the guest room, that she realized nowhere in any conversation that day had the issue of mutants come up, and not because the family had _avoided_ it. They hadn't known to avoid it. And it all reminded Rogue that mutancy wasn't something most people spent a lot of time thinking about, however much it loomed large in her own life.

That thought was . . . strangely comforting.

* * *

"I'm none too sure this's a grand idea, Artie," Terry said as the two of them waited on a corner of East 178 Street and Daly Avenue in the East Tremont neighborhood of the South Bronx, not far from the medical center. Behind them rose a burned out building, and only half the storefronts down the street were occupied. This area was coming to be called Mutieville, with the added humor that it lay just off the southwest corner of the Bronx Zoo. "Right where they belong," said popular opinion, even here in an area of the city where poverty and decay were too well entrenched to allow the urban renewal underway in other areas of New York.

Now, on his PDA, Artie quick-typed with a stylus, _No hurt, him - us_

"He's not the one I'm worried about," Terry said as her eyes followed a trio of tough guys sauntering down the opposite sidewalk, wearing the colors of one gang or another.

"The flatscans don't bug us much," said a voice from behind them in the shadows of a broken doorway. "Those three won't cross Daly into Morlock town."

Terry screamed - but it was a normal squeaky scream, not her usual piercing shriek, and she was apparently so surprised by that, the scream stopped in her throat. Artie resisted grinning. "Don't worry," Leech said. "Your mutation will come back as soon as you're away from me. Artie's told me about you. Nice to meet you finally, Terry." And he moved forward, just enough for the sunlight to catch his face as he pulled down the hood of a homemade, ragged cloak. "I'm Danny, but everyone just calls me Leech."

Terry stared at his face in shock, and Artie recalled the first time he'd met Leech, not just chatted with him over IM. Leech was, well, ugly. He had no nose, lips, or ears, only slits where those would have been, and his head looked like nothing so much as a skull with pea-green skin stretched over it. He had no hair, either, on the crown or as eyebrows, though he did have eyelashes. His eyes, in fact, were completely normal - a pretty green, like new grass. Artie always tried to focus on them when Leech talked. Terry, he noticed, was doing the same once she'd taken in the whole of him.

But Leech turned now to Artie. "You bringing out the cavalry, huh?"

Artie typed: _Want U 2 C. Terry x scared. Safe - Xavier's._

"It's safer in Mutieville, or the sewers."

"But what of school?" Terry asked.

Leech smiled, or smiled as well as one could without lips. "I've learned everything I need. I can read, do math - all that stuff. The rest - it's not like I'll ever go to college or get a normal job."

"Ya don' know that!" Terry began, her hotheaded nature coming to the fore - and her accent with it. "By the time we graduate -"

"- I'll still be hideous and you'll still be a passer."

Terry blinked, then opened her mouth to argue further but he just shook his head. "Look, I don't mean that like it sounds, not really. I'm just pointing out the facts. The flatscans are going to accept you a lot quicker than they'll ever accept me."

"Then you have t'fight to make 'em!"

Grinning, Leech said to Artie, "She really is a firebrand."

"I'm standin' right here, man! Don' talk about me in the third person!"

"Sorry. It's just . . . " He sighed. "There's a big difference between those of you who can pass, or at least don't look too different, like Artie, and someone like me."

Artie tapped on his PDA, _2 them, x 2 us. ALL 'us.'_ It was an old argument, though. He'd just hoped that bringing pretty Terry Roarke might convince Leech that it wasn't just Artie with his snake tongue who could accept a green boy with a face that looked like death warmed over.

"Maybe it is all 'us' to you," Leech said, reading the message, "but how many kids at your school make people scream when they go out in public?"

"_Herr_ Wagner would," Terry replied. "He's no student, to be sure, but he is a teacher. Well, he teaches German, anyway. He's got blue skin, yellow eyes, and a tail."

"Artie told me about the blue guy. Still -"

"'Still,' my foot! Read my lips, Leech. _We don't care_ - nor do we care what the rest of 'em think, either. Come to the school - see for yourself, aye? If you don't like it, you can come back here. But I'd bet a whole box of cookies that nobody at Xavier's would do more than look twice at ya."

Artie thought her exaggerating at bit, but she was essentially correct. And they'd be sure before Leech got there that nobody did look more than twice.

Fists on hips, Leech glared from one of them to the other. "Fine, maybe I'll come. But that don't mean I'll stay, because even if I did, how long would it last? Three more years? I graduate and then what? I'll be right back down here. May as well learn to make it here now. That's my idea of a 'good education.' That school up there is just a hiding place. The world still hates us, and there's no room in it for mutants unless you're a passer."

It was cynical, and sad, but Artie had to admit, Leech had a point. Terry would go on to have a normal life - maybe. But even Artie, with his normal face, was going to have problems as soon as he opened his mouth. He tried not to think about that, to be optimistic instead and believe that by the time he was eighteen, maybe non-mutants wouldn't throw rocks at him on a college campus. But he just didn't know.

"So when're you going to come?" Terry was asking.

Leech shrugged with one shoulder. "I said maybe. And I don't know when." He glanced at Artie. "I have to go. I'll email you." And raising the hood of his cape, he disappeared back through the dark doorway.

Artie and Terry exchanged a glance. "Think he'll come?" Terry asked. Artie shrugged, having no real idea. He'd only known Leech about three months, and it had taken Leech two of those before he'd agreed to meet Artie in person. "Why don't you just tell the professor about him?" Terry asked.

Artie typed, _Leech said no. Y tell prof? Won't make L come. Y betray trust?_

Terry sighed out in a gust and took off down the sidewalk. "We'd better get ourselves back to the station or Jubilee'll start to wonder."

* * *

**Notes:** Thanks to Redhawk for a little help with the martial arts stuff. Any errors I make aren't his fault. "Jeff" Bobby's cousin is for Jeff. And thanks to Minarya for a fast edit of the last scene. Thanks to Naomi for editing, as always.


	13. Personal Journal: Thawing

_**From Scott Summers' Personal Journal:  
Several entries from mid-November to early December **_

Nothing more of a "ghostly" nature has happened at the mansion since the funeral, unless Kitty's mysterious pictures count. (And I think that "ghost" was Warren, or maybe Hank.)

I don't believe all the ruckus was caused by Jean - though sometimes I feel as if she's standing right beside me. But that comes from the same sort of mental fill-in-the-blank that an amputee experiences. Jean is my ghost limb. The books I've read call it "searching behavior" - the bereaved (yes, I get a label now) thinks he smells the dead person's perfume, or catches sight of her hair in a crowd, or hears her heels in the hallway.

And I've done all that, to be sure. I still sleep on one side of our bed - still call it "ours," too - and sometimes, right before I wake, I feel her lying beside me.

Except she isn't. It's just me wanting her so badly it makes me see and hear things, makes me hump the bed at night because I'm dreaming about fucking her - even while I'm so angry at her it's a physical pain. Supposedly anger is part of grief, too, but not like this.

I've started smoking again, and more than the occasional pipe with the professor. I'm back up to a pack a day. I never managed to quit entirely, but Jean hated it so much that I'd cut back nearly to nothing. I loved her, so I tried to stop. (And whatever Warren and Colleen said at her funeral, I honest-to-God did try.) She loved me, so she put up with the fact I never could quit completely.

But with her dead, I've gone right back, and not just as a result of anxiety or depression.

I went back out of sheer spite . . . which is ironic, since the only person it'll hurt is me. But I do it because I know it would upset her. I even smoke in our suite, where I absolutely never did before. It's stupid. I know it's stupid, and meaningless, and juvenile - and I still do it. There are days I want her back just so I can yell at her for leaving me, for choosing death over life.

There's no ghost in this house except the one in my head.

Many years ago, I asked the professor if he believed in a soul. He said he did. At the time, I asked him to believe for me. He replied with something I've never really forgotten: "I shall believe for you . . . and believe in you, even when you can't."

That was a long time ago - thirteen years, to be exact - and his belief carried me through so much. His belief, and Jean's, and Warren's and Hank's. They taught me to trust in people, even if I never learned to trust what I couldn't see, smell, taste, touch, or feel. I am an existentialist in the truest sense - I know only what I've experienced. I haven't died, so I don't know what comes after. And if at a few times and in a few places, I've experienced a sense of holy awe, at heart, I'm practical, pragmatic, earthy, and sense-oriented. My faith is reserved for people with skin on.

* * *

They're all trickling back home gradually. It's been two months - over two, in fact. Hank stayed through Thanksgiving, both for the holiday and so he could get Cerebro up and running. It'll take a while before it's back to spec, but I can see the relief in Xavier's face. I think he felt more handicapped without Cerebro than he would have without his chair. In any case, Hank can't stay longer; he took a lot of vacation time as it was, and they need him at the CDC. It's flu season, among other things.

I'm not sure how much longer Edna's staying, either. We've advertised for a new school medic. Xavier wants at least a physician's assistant (P.A.)., but he'll take an R.N., and the applications have been rolling in. Hank and Edna went through them all. I can't even look at them, though I know damn well I should be there for the interviews. Living with Jean for nine years, I learned a bit about medicine. After we find a replacement, Edna may return to Illinois, or she may not. I'm not sure even she's sure.

And Warren. He's still sleeping here, though he spends most of his days in the city now. It's starting to drain him, the coming and going, and he's put his social life on hold for me. He can't continue to do that as the Holiday season approaches. There will be parties, and he'll be expected to attend. But I'm most reluctant to see him go. It's almost like old times with him around - like college, or even before. But that was then, this is now, and he has a multi-billion-dollar international company to run. It's selfish to hold him here. I need to cut him free so he can get on with his real life.

* * *

Jubilee suffered a flashback yesterday that set off an anxiety attack. Rogue came for me and we found Jubes curled up in the suite bathroom between the toilet and the bathtub. I sent away Rogue and Kitty and talked her down. It killed me to see _Jubilee_ unable to breathe from panic.

I finally got her out of there and held her on her bed for a while, my back against the headboard while she sat curled up between my knees as if she were seven instead of seventeen. Probably not the smartest move for a young unmarried male teacher to be holding one of his (very nubile) female students on her bed, but well, we're not exactly a normal school here. And Jubilee doesn't have any parents who might sue. Like me, she's an orphan, and _I'm_ her parent, from discipline to holding her when she's freaking out. Jean used to talk about having kids of our own and I'd just look at her and say, "What? Thirty-eight" - or whatever the current enrollment - "isn't enough?" I've known Jubilee since she was thirteen, wrecking every piece of electronic equipment in the house because she couldn't control her paffs yet. I wouldn't call her my "baby" in the usual sense, but she'll always have a special place in my heart, pranks and all.

When her breathing and heart rate returned to normal, she pulled away and ran fingers through her hair, trying to regain her dignity. "Thanks," she whispered.

"No problem. You wanna talk about it?"

"No," she said, but then did anyway. "I thought I - we - were gonna die. So many times. From the minute we woke up in that cell until Mr. - _Herr_ - Wagner showed up. I thought we were gonna die, y'know?"

"Yeah."

We were silent a while. She studied her nails - painted blue this week. Her knees were drawn up to her chest. I still had my back against her headboard. "Are you ever afraid?" she asked. "I mean, really, really afraid?"

"A lot, actually."

She looked up at me. "You don't act like it."

"I learned not to. You don't act like it either, most of the time. You learned not to."

Her shoulders fell. "Yeah, but now I'm really screwed up."

That hadn't been the point I'd been trying to make, and I breathed out heavily. "Jubes, you went to sleep in your bed and woke up in a cell in a military installation in Canada. If that _didn't_ freak you out, I'd be worried about you." Jubilee was like me in one important way - she had to be reasoned with, not just reassured. "You're a tough kid. Artie told me you took care of them in there. I'm proud of you."

She eyed me again. "Thanks," she said. Another long pause. Normally, Jubilee could carry on an entire conversation single-handedly, but not now. "You think it'll get better? I mean the, you know, freaking out thing? The nightmares?"

"Yes. But only if you don't pretend it isn't happening."

"It's kinda hard to pretend it's not happening when my roommates find me bugging out in the damn bathroom!"

"That's not what I meant. It gets that bad when you try to suppress it. Next time you feel yourself spiraling, call me, okay?"

"Yeah, well, what if you're in class or off with the X-team or something?"

"If I'm in class, call me anyway. If I'm off with the X-team, call the professor. Sometimes all you need is to ground yourself, get reminded that you're _not_ back in that cell. Okay?"

She nodded. "Okay."

I climbed off her bed and stretched. "You'll get past it, Jubes. Not tomorrow, and not next month, but you'll get past it."

"I'd rather just get over it."

Hearing an echo of myself at seventeen, I smiled. "You can't go over or under or around it - you have to go through it. Then it's behind you. Trust me on this one."

She glared at me. "You ever been locked in a cell for almost two days and not know if or when they were going to start experimenting on you like the Nazis?"

I opened my mouth to say something flip, but nothing came out. "Yeah," I said instead. "Not in a cell, but in a bathroom. They had my wrists handcuffed to a towel rack that was bolted into the wall, so I couldn't get away. When they came, I didn't know if they were going to feed me or beat me." Or do other things, but I wasn't telling Jubilee that. It's called "dogging," breaking in a new worker, but she didn't need to know the whole story. This was about her, not me.

Completely taken by surprise, she gaped. "God, Scott. I didn't know. _When?_"

"I was fourteen. It was a long time ago and I'm not asking for your sympathy, or trying to one-up you. I just wanted you to know that yeah, I know. You have no control over anything and at first you just want to piss yourself, you're so scared. Then you kind of . . . exist, moment to moment. It's the only way to keep from going crazy."

She was still staring and I was suddenly unsure whether I should have said anything; she didn't need to be dealing with my shit in addition to her own. "Hey, don't blow it out of proportion, okay? Just . . . forget I mentioned it. You can get over this. I know you can." She was a whole lot less messed up than I'd been.

"How long did it take you?" she asked, her initial astonishment transforming into curiosity.

"A while. But I don't have nightmares anymore - haven't for years. I'm pretty okay these days."

"Did the professor rescue you? Get you out of there?"

"I - yeah. Yeah, he did." Sometimes the simple answer was easiest.

She nodded and hugged her knees tighter. "And you can talk about it now?"

"More or less."

She nodded again. "Thanks. For telling me."

"You're welcome."

"Do you want me to, uh, not tell anyone else?"

"It doesn't matter." And I realized, a bit to my surprise, that it didn't. "It's not something I dwell on - or something I want anybody else to dwell on or get upset about, you know?" I snorted. "I think the students are worried enough about me as it is."

And that startled a laugh out of her. "Yeah, they are a little," she admitted. Then she relaxed her legs, stretching them out in front of her on the bed and leaning back into her hands. "How _are_ you? I mean really?"

It wasn't the subject change I'd have chosen, but I remembered something I'd told Jean long ago - that dwelling on my own problems didn't go very far to helping me get past them. Sometimes I wanted to help someone else instead, and I hadn't appreciated being treated as if I were fragile. So I pulled out the chair from Jubilee's desk and sat down, leaning over a little to rest forearms on my knees, hands gripped loosely between. "It hurts," I said. "A lot. I miss her. But it's easier to talk about her than to have people cat-footing around me, trying not to say Jean's name."

She'd tilted her head and seemed to consider that. "Yeah. I remember when Mom and Dad died. No one wanted to talk to me about them, and it was like they'd never existed."

"Exactly. Sometimes I want to talk about her. Sometimes I don't."

"Maybe that's why people are afraid to ask, in case you don't."

"I'm not going to bite off heads. I'll just say it's not a good day."

She nodded, then looked down at her socked feet, pointing her toes and relaxing them. "Do you still get mad, about the whole thing?"

"Yes."

"I do, too."

"There's a lot to be mad about."

Looking up again, she narrowed her eyes. "What d'you think's going to happen in the long run, to mutants? I mean, right now, I think people feel kinda guilty. But I don't think it'll last."

"I don't, either. And I don't know what'll happen in the long run, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. I'm a little like a rat - I'm smart and hard to drown."

She broke up laughing at that.

* * *

**Notes:** The Scott and Jubilee scene is dedicated fondly to Dex for "Orphans," and to Quidam for her Jubilee-and-the-ferret stories.


	14. Irish Whiskey

Warren knew he shouldn't laugh - absolutely shouldn't - but watching a half-dozen teenage girls drag Hank McCoy onto the ballroom floor to dance to Thomas Dolby's "She Blinded Me with Science" was simply too funny. Though a fine musician and star athlete, Hank had always claimed no talent for dancing - and his current display only confirmed that - but his real problem was _self-consciousness_. He believed himself ugly, an opinion for which Warren had less sympathy than friendship might have dictated, because the girls _did_ notice Hank, even if the members of his current harem were all fifteen years too young. Still, it confirmed Warren's long-time argument that Hank was more charismatic than he recognized, and this evening was going straight into Warren's arsenal of arguments the next time Hank complained of a lack of female attention.

"If I took a picture of this, do you think he'd kidnap my bike and hold it hostage?"

It was Scott, who'd come up beside Warren where he stood to one side of the ballroom floor, watching the student body get silly for a few hours at the annual Christmas party. Scott handed over a cup of punch and taking it, Warren turned slightly, using the bulk of his wings to conceal the flask he pulled from his vest pocket, pouring in a generous shot of silver agave tequila. Scott snorted, but didn't otherwise comment. "I'm just glad he could get away for Christmas," Warren said. "At least with Edna here instead of in Chicago, we get to see him more often than once every three years. E-mail just isn't the same."

"He actually answers email from you? All I get is, 'Buried! Will write soon!' - which I translate to mean, 'Expect a letter in about four months.' He always has time to forward jokes, though."

Warren just grinned. "So, you ready to leave?"

"I could probably slip away, yeah, but at the rate you've been ingesting tequila, I'm driving."

In reply, Warren simply handed over the keys and pretended not to notice how quickly Scott snatched them - and not because he was worried about Warren's state of intoxication. No, Warren had brought his Lamborghini Miura, and Scott was practically salivating.

They said quick farewells, then went upstairs to dress for their next party - this one rather more formal. Warren had put off donning the wing rack until the absolute last minute, and Scott helped him into it, being extra careful that everything was tight and hidden under the tux jacket. As always, there was The Bulge, but public fiction attributed that to a spinal deformity, a fiction Warren maintained by careful dressing and a responsible, reticent, workaholic lifestyle. It was amazing what "boring" could hide, especially when the press had flashier fish in the form of Paris Hilton and her ilk. Nonetheless, some people knew the truth. It was simply too big a secret to hide, but the fact it _remained_ largely secret said quite a lot about Society exclusivity.

Scott drove them to outer Long Island at as breakneck a pace as Saturday traffic and the Fuzz Buster would permit. "Down that lane," Warren said, pointing to a tree-lined private drive that, in New York, was the privilege of wealth. At the gate-house, Warren leaned across Scott to offer the guard his invitation, and the man opened the wrought-iron gate with **The Hellfire Club** engraved on a little plaque in its center.

The Victorian mansion beyond was twice the size of Xavier's, weighed down by architectural embellishments that Warren found somewhere south of pretentious and north of plain godawful. "This place gives me the heebie-jeebies," Scott muttered as he pulled the Lamborghini into a spot on the drive behind a Bentley. It wasn't the first time he'd been dragged here with Warren, but it had been a while. In fact, it had been years since Warren had attended himself, but his father had another engagement slated for the evening, and had asked his son to come in his place. The Hellfire Club was the most exclusive private society in New York, and Scott had no hope of ever being invited to join despite his status as heir to an estate estimated at over seven million. His blood just wasn't blue enough. In fact, it wasn't blue at all - something for which Warren was enormously grateful.

When they arrived, the party was in full swing, if cutthroat "see and be seen" could ever be called a party. Warren hated these things, but had been bred to them and was rather good at the game, truth be told. He hobnobbed as needed, paid compliments as required, and kept Scott plied with rich food and expensive scotch. At a black-and-white ball, all color came from the decor, not the guests, though the house's primary accents were red velvet; gilt; and florid, Victorian wallpaper in wine. The overall impression was of a card deck. At least the tree was decorated in gold and royal purple, though the lights were stylish white. Warren had always preferred the multicolored bulbs that Scott and Hank had picked out for the mansion. The colors were undeniably "plebeian," but they were cheerful and vivid.

Warren was talking to Tony Stark when Scott suddenly appeared at his side. "Excuse me," he said, hauling Warren off behind a pillar and glancing out onto the floor like a spy.

"What are you doing?" Warren asked, annoyed.

"You know Sebastian Shaw?" Scott asked. "Robert Kelly's anti-mutant buddy, who Hank debated two months ago?"

Warren just blinked. "Scott, I know everyone here, more or less. Especially one of the Lords Cardinal."

"The who?"

"The key officers of the Club. Shaw's the Black King."

"Black King?" Then Scott shook his head. "Forget it. Shaw's here with Emma Frost. I just saw them on the other side of the room."

"So? She's Winston Frost's daughter; of course she's here."

"Emma Frost was a _former student_ of ours, War. She's a mutant. What the hell is she doing with _Shaw_? Never mind he's old enough to be her father."

And Warren finally made the connection. Jean had complained of the girl on more than one occasion, comparing her unfavorably to Warren. "She's that telepath Jean didn't trust."

"Exactly."

Warren pondered that. "I wouldn't make too much of it. Shaw probably doesn't realize what she is. I've heard mutterings that she's being considered as the new White Queen. Paris Seville died in a boating accident last year."

"Black King, White Queen - what the fuck _is_ that about?"

Warren grinned. "Affectation. They like to model themselves on English occult societies like Aleister Crowley's Golden Dawn or the original Hellfire Club, The Brotherhood of St. Francis of Wycombe. Only in this case, they take their names from chess pieces instead of Semetic-Egyptian godlings. It's really all rather grade school. Anyway, I thought Emma's candidacy was a bit of a joke. She's barely legal, running against women twice her age, but if she _is_ a telepath, that might explain it. Shaw's the real power of the Royal Four, so it doesn't surprise me if she's after his support."

Scott turned his head to look back out towards the floor. "I don't think she's playing him. I think they're partners." He looked back around. "What do you really know about Shaw?"

"Not a lot, but I can find out more, if you want."

"Do it. And let's get out of here before Emma sees me - and knows I saw her with Shaw."

"I can't leave yet," Warren said, frowning. They'd been there all of an hour. "And it won't matter if you see her talking to Shaw. I'll go talk to Shaw myself before long."

"No." Scott shook his head once decisively. "She wasn't just talking, War. She was _hanging on his elbow_."

Warren glanced around the column, but couldn't spot Shaw at all. Frost was busy chatting up a pair of old biddies and their frozen spouses on the other side of the room. Turning back to Scott, he said, "If she was with him, she's not now. The whole point of the Christmas ball is to mingle. Why don't _you_ go talk to _her_, so she knows you're here? Then if she's trying to conceal her association with Shaw and subsequently avoids him, we'll know that."

One of Scott's eyebrows went up. "And you tell me you're not a tactician."

"I'm not - outside a boardroom or a garden party. She's that way." Warren pointed.

Scott headed off, muttering, "Keep your shields up - she's not Xavier, or Jean, but she can read you if you're not careful." Curious, Warren followed, albeit at a slight distance. And because he wasn't right on Scott's heels, he was able to see another man with short, dark hair turn his head as Scott passed - and immediately step forward into Scott's path. Attractive and elegantly dressed with a trimmed goatee, the man was tall - taller even than Warren - and quite prepossessing, with a hypnotic charisma, but maleficent. He was watching Scott and only Scott with a cobra's flat intensity, and Warren decided he'd never seen a man who scared him as badly as this one. It was all in the eyes - the same bottomless shade as hell, and just as unfeeling. The hair on the back of Warren's neck stood up.

Holding out a hand, the man introduced himself. "Dr. Nathaniel Essex. You must be Scott Summers, Jean Grey's fiancé." His English was as cultured as anyone's in the House of Lords, and he was still scrutinizing Scott as if he were a bug on a pin. A very interesting bug.

Scott withdrew a step, but then halted and took the offered hand, shaking once firmly. "I'm Scott Summers, yes. How do you know me - or Jean?"

"Jean's a colleague. I had the privilege of hearing her deliver a paper in Stockholm last year. We shared tea afterward, and discussed future directions in mutant research." He paused to look about. "Where is she? We haven't spoken since and I'd be delighted to renew our acquaintance."

Scott's chin tilted just a little, but otherwise, he didn't react. "Jean died earlier this fall. In the Blackout. She was driving at the time the Blackout happened - lost control of her car."

Essex's head whipped around. "_What?" _It halted conversation all about them - but Warren noticed the crowd had already drawn subtly back. And Essex's eyes weren't flat any more; they'd widened with a terrible rage. Warren was tempted to grab Scott and run. But then the cold expression returned, at odds with his next words. "I'm so sorry to hear that. Extremely. I've rarely met such a promising young researcher and scholar. Her work will be sorely missed."

Scott had drawn back, too, but rather than appear miffed, Essex seemed almost amused. "Her colleagues are putting together a Festschrift in her honor," Scott blurted out. "I don't know much more, except the papers are supposed to concern X-Factor mutation, or at least the genetics of mutation generally. You might ask Hank McCoy about it, if you know him."

"I do know Henry, yes, but normally, contributions to Festschriften are by invitation only." His smile was vaguely condescending - an academic patrician educating the ignorant. "Perhaps he didn't realize I knew Jean, and her work, quite well. Again, I am . . . extremely distressed to hear of her passing. You have my deepest sympathy, Mr. Summers."

Turning abruptly on his heel, he departed - and not just back into the crowd, but out of the hall and mansion altogether. Warren and Scott both watched him go, and Scott muttered, "That guy is downright creepy."

"No kidding," Warren agreed. "I'm not sure you should have mentioned the Festschrift. I don't think Jean would've wanted him contributing."

"He said he knew her. And I just wanted to get rid of him. I'll warn Hank, though, that he might get a letter from the guy."

"I'm sure Hank'll be _delighted_ to field that one."

Warren's misgivings proved perceptive. When they returned to the mansion well after midnight, the student party was over, but some of the older kids were cleaning the ballroom under Hank's supervision. When Warren and Scott told him about the encounter, he gaped. "You told _Nathaniel Essex_ about Jean's Festschrift? Scott, did you experience a temporary loss of your mind? The man is a menace! I can't think of anyone whose contribution Jean would want _less_."

"So you do know him?"

"Everyone knows him. He's brilliant. And evasive. And one of the most arrogant men I've ever had the displeasure of meeting." Then Hank sighed, admitting, "You wouldn't be the first person he's set off the mark. If he does inquire, I'll simply tell him that I've found a publisher already and have contracted for the page limit with as many articles as I can take at the current time."

"Did Jean actually talk to him at Stockholm?" Scott asked, as if half afraid to hear the answer.

"I have no idea," Hank replied. "She may very well have, but if so, I suspect it was because she couldn't get away from him. No one spends time with Essex at conferences if they can avoid it."

* * *

". . . . and so I didn't want you to worry that you'd be refused admittance or made fun of."

At this, Kurt Wagner's lips tipped up and his tail curled loosely around Warren's wrist. "I am not worried about the stares. The blue man with the tail is not so typical, _ja_?" His small smile broadened. "Of course they will stare." Then the grin faded. "I am more worried of the rocks thrown at the children if I am in their company on _Velija_ - Christmas Eve."

It wasn't the response Warren had expected, nor the fear he'd hoped to diffuse. He (and more importantly, his parents) had always worried about the stares, but Kurt's philosophic acceptance of their inevitability - and his patience with it - gave Warren something new to chew on. It wasn't the staring itself that mattered, but _why_, and what followed. Shame was learned from responses to the self, and it seemed there were lessons in perspective that a demon could teach an angel on Christmas Eve.

"No one' s going to throw rocks at you," Warren assured Kurt, who uncurled his tail in relief or acceptance. Kurt's tail - much as Warren's wings - acted as a barometer of his mood. "Scott, the professor, and I have gone to Midnight Mass at this parish for several years," Warren went on. "We take any students who want to go with us - or any adult staff."

"You belong to Mother Church?"

"Scott does, not me. And Xavier's father was Catholic - the name gives it away."

Pulling his chin down and raising his brows, Kurt said, "I did not think that Cyclops held to any faith."

Uncomfortable, Warren shrugged. "He believes, and he doesn't."

The Church was one area where Scott's relentless logic failed, and if Warren didn't think he really believed in God, he found aspects of Catholicism comforting. Scott would always be Catholic, even if he wasn't necessarily Christian. He attended mass on Christmas, Easter, and occasionally in between, and even went to confession - though the latter had taken him years to work himself up to, years, and finding the right priest. Scott had changed parishes and begun attending mass more regularly when Fr. Richard McNaught had shown up for chaplain duty at the East Tremont Medical Center in Mutieville where Jean (among others) had spent time volunteering medical services to mutant patients. "I found a priest who's a priest," he'd said.

This evening when they arrived at the moderate-sized parish in New Rochelle, Kurt donned his trench coat and hat. "You don't need that here," Scott told him, but Kurt gestured to Warren.

"He has the wings hidden."

"Yeah, but he doesn't have to. It's just . . . his choice." Scott avoided looking at Warren. It was an old argument. 'Half the jet set knows about the wings, and all your board of directors - and you're worried about Father Richard's _parishioners_?' But to the parishioners, he was _The_ Warren Worthington, and he couldn't trust them not to name-drop and give away his secret. As much as he disdained New York Society, he could still predict what they would - and wouldn't - do, not to mention that he had sufficient dirt on most of them to make them think twice about outing him as a mutant. "Eventually, War, people will figure it out," Scott had told him on more than one occasion.

"Perhaps," he'd retorted. "But if parading up and down Madison Avenue with my wings in full view might net a lot of short-term interviews, in the long run, it'd lose me all my leverage. Right now I - and my money - are more useful to the school than fifteen minutes of notoriety."

"You're worth more than your money,' Scott would always reply, irked.

And while Scott's fierce defense touched Warren, it also annoyed him. "Money and influence is what makes Xavier's enterprise possible. You fight for mutant rights in black leather. Let me fight for them with financial pressure. But that means I need to _retain_ the finances, and coming out as a mutant would seriously hurt Worthington stock shares."

And that had usually ended the quarrel because, frustrated philosopher though he was, Scott was also pragmatic enough to recognize the fundamental truth in Warren's argument, however much he didn't want to.

Now as they entered the church, Kurt did remove his hat, but beyond a few double-takes, no one said a word. Father Richard's parish prided itself on being liberal and progressive. "Doesn't it piss you off?" Warren overheard one of the kids ask Kurt as they were seated. "Everybody's so _open-minded_ and shit here, but if you walked out the doors and down a block, they'd be throwing bottles at you."

"All the more reason," Kurt replied, "for enjoying the blessings of this place, then. To think only of what yet isn't, is to spoil what is, _ja_?"

It silenced the questioner, but Warren wondered if that were because Kurt had won the point, or because the kid was too busy trying to puzzle out Kurt's poetic phrasing. But Warren liked it, thinking it would make a good quote for one of those motivational posters his human resources department kept insisting on purchasing for conference rooms.

(Scott had always hated the posters, and after a certain, notorious visit to Worthington offices the previous March, Warren had received an affronted memo from the head of human resources complaining that someone had "impudently affixed sarcastic and wholly inappropriate" sticky notes to every motivational poster on the seventh floor - with a sample affixed. Warren had recognized the handwriting, and had laughed for a full minute.)

After mass, they returned to the mansion and the kids headed up to bed while the adults headed for the den, where they found Ororo, Edna and Hank decorating the tree amid laughter and Captain Morgan Spiced Rum eggnog. There were no presents beneath it just yet, but would be by morning. Once, in keeping with Xavier family tradition, presents had been opened on Christmas Eve, but with time and an increasing number of residents, present opening had been moved to Christmas morning. Warren didn't care one way or the other, and now wandered the periphery sipping eggnog and listening to the others trade banter. Attending mass had put Kurt in high spirits, which made Warren smile. But to see Scott sitting with Xavier off in one corner, talking quietly, made Warren smile more - until he passed the fireplace and its multitude of overlapping stockings, and noticed one in particular that shouldn't be there.

Jean's.

Frowning and wondering why Ororo (or anyone else) would have put it up, Warren spread one wing for cover as he took it down and shoved it in his pocket. Then he continued pacing the room until the tree was decorated, the gifts spread, and everyone was ready to hit the sack. It was after two in the morning, and the younger students would be up before the sun.

As, indeed, they were, banging on his door in their excitement before running on. Groaning, he rose to don one of his open-backed robes, brushed his teeth, and headed out, finding Scott in the hall, too, unshaved and hair-rumpled. "Why can't Christmas start at noon?" he muttered, which made Warren grin. When they'd been students at the mansion, it usually had. Together, they arrived downstairs. Here in the dead of winter, it was still quite dark outside but every light was on in the polished-wood hall leading to the den as excited teens milled about, waiting to be allowed entry. It was good to see them excited; these were the children who had no home but this one for Christmas. "Coming through, coming through," Scott called, pushing past with Warren in tow and shutting the den door in curious faces.

The adults were always admitted first, to be certain everything was in order. As indeed it was, if a goofy Kurt in Santa stocking, perched on the back of the sofa qualified. Warren ambled over to take the mug that Kurt held out to him. "It is Romani," Kurt promised with a grin. "And a very merry Christmas to you, _mein Freund_." Ever since their roof conversation, Kurt had taken to supplying Warren with thick, sweet gypsy coffee.

"Thanks," Warren said. "Stupid question maybe, but what do your people do for Christmas?"

"Eat," Kurt replied, arm swinging out dramatically. "It is a great feast. But also - we remember our ancestors, and the dead."

And abruptly, Warren wondered if maybe _Kurt_ had been the one to put up Jean's stocking the night before. Well-meaning, if not the best choice. But they had no more time to converse as the professor had opened the door and children poured into the room, giggling and shouting. They headed for the stockings first and began going through them, pulling them down and handing them around according to the knitted name on each stocking top.

Abruptly the noise stilled and Jubilee, at the center of stocking distribution, stood staring at the one in her hand. "Jean," she read, looking up in horror. "It's _Dr. Grey's_."

"No."

The word fell out of Warren's mouth. "I took that _down_ last night - I took it _down_. It was up and I took it down. It can't be up again. It's in my room."

Except it wasn't. It was here in the den, and (lightly) filled, too.

Scott pushed forward to take the stocking from Jubilee. Turning it over, he dumped the contents onto the Persian rug under his feet: dark chocolate Dove bars, a cloisonne dragonfly barrette, a new laser pointer, and a small gold bracelet made of delicate square links and fresh-water pearls.

He dropped to his knees beside it all, picking up the barrette and bracelet. "I got these last summer," he said, "at the York art festival. She saw the bracelet and fell in love with it. I saw the barrette later. She loved dragonflies."

The students had drawn back, some with wide eyes. "We got her the laser pointer," Jubilee added, and Scott looked up. "Hers was always, you know, going out in the middle of lecture and she'd have to unscrew the end to re-seat the battery. So we took up a collection to get a really nice one from Office Depot. We were going to give it to her on the last day of class."

"I had the chocolate bars set aside," Ororo added, dark eyes enormous. "Scott - I did not do this. I promise you."

"I know," he said softly. "You couldn't have. Nobody knew about the bracelet or barrette but me." Face carefully blank, he picked up the items and slipped them back into the stocking, then rose to his feet and left the den. His own stocking was still hanging on the mantel. No one said anything.

Warren went after him, but the bedroom door was locked. Warren banged on it. There was no reply. "Scott - open up or I'll go get my keycard!"

"No," came the reply, not shouted but spoken in a quiet voice very near the door. "Just leave me alone, all right? Today, just leave me alone, please."

And Warren had no reply for that tone of pleading. Was it better to argue or comply? Unsure, he went back down to the den. Students were still opening presents, but quietly. No one wanted to talk about the stocking that shouldn't have been there. And when, at Christmas dinner later, Kurt set a plate of food and glass of wine in a corner, no one objected. Scott didn't show for the meal, and no one commented on that, either.

After supper, the professor sent a telepathic request for the adults to stay as the children dispersed to play with their new toys. They moved closer to the head of the table - Warren, Ororo, Hank, Edna and Kurt. Xavier regarded them all soberly. "I realize," he began, "that we are each likely to come to very different conclusions about what is going on, but at this point, I am open to theory, speculation, and even rumor."

No one had to ask to what he was referring, and while the words were intended humorously, the subject was deadly serious.

Ororo tipped her head and looked over at Hank. "Aside from the obvious" - which Warren assumed meant that they had a ghost - "is it possible that these alterations in our DNA that you spoke of could result in Scott developing a . . . new power? He said that he was the only one who knew about the bracelet and barrette."

"But he didn't seem to know about the laser pointer - or your chocolate bars," Hank replied.

"I'm not a geneticist," Edna put in, "but from what I've seen of mutations, I'd expect that if Scott did develop a second one, it'd be an extension of or related to the first."

Hank was nodding and Warren added, "His beams are a little stronger; that's all. We tested them the day after Hank talked to the both of you. No major changes."

"The problem," Hank said, "is that all 'ghostly' events - for lack of a better word - which have thus far transpired could not have been effected by any single individual, even Scott . . . even Jean. If you recall, Scott was not present when the mansion was ransacked, and likewise - _if_ we were to allow Jean's ghost as a candidate - that insufficiently explains the stocking this morning. Those were all presents _for_ Jean, not from Jean. In short, I can find no common thread to all incidents that might suggest a cause or individual behind them. That could indicate more than one cause, but then our quandary becomes magnitudes more complicated."

Xavier tilted his head, thoughtfully. "One observation, Hank, on the presents. It's been some time since I've been well and truly _surprised_ on Christmas. A pitfall of being a telepath."

"You're saying that she might have known about the presents?" Ororo asked.

"Entirely possible. Her telepathy was not terribly powerful, it's true, but it had begun to expand rapidly in the last five weeks of her life. She may have picked up on stray thoughts that she would not have normally."

Warren was blinking, afraid to believe what he thought the professor might be implying. "You think it _is_ Jean," he said finally.

"I don't know," Xavier replied. "But when probable and possible answers prove untenable, then one must seriously consider the improbable. And as improbable as it may sound, the most logical explanation at the moment is that we do, indeed, have a ghost. Or something very like it. The question then becomes what to do about it."

Warren sat back and blew out, frustrated and angry; yet, he had to admit the professor had a point. There were no good explanations for what was happening except an elaborate prank, but no prankster could possess all the necessary puzzle pieces to pull it off.

"Having a powwow without me?" came a voice from the dining hall door, and everyone started, turning. Scott was standing in the entrance, looking rather the worse for wear. He still hadn't shaved, though he'd dressed.

"We were not intentionally excluding you," Xavier replied as Scott entered to seat himself in an empty chair beside Warren, careful as always not to drag the legs over Warren's trailing wingtips.

"Just taking advantage of the fact I wasn't at dinner," Scott returned with an edge. Xavier raised an eyebrow in response but Scott reached for Warren's wine glass to down what was left in the bottom, then grabbed a bottle and poured himself some more. "I heard the tail end," he added, sitting back with the full glass. He didn't appear on the edge of a rage, instead showing that preternatural calm that Warren considered worse. "I've been thinking about it all day, too," he said, "and I can't find any better explanation that doesn't violate Occam's Razor twenty ways to Sunday, but that it's Jean."

Twisting in his seat, Warren stared at him. _Scott_ thought they had a ghost?

"It's the simplest explanation," Scott replied to his unasked question. "Don't make things too complicated - it's a basic tenet of model-building, or strategy. Things are happening that none of us lay claim to, or half the time even know enough _to_ do. The only person who could be doing them is dead - or that's what we all assumed. But are we sure of that? What if she's not?"

For three beats, no one replied at all, then everyone seemed to be talking at once, pointing out that they'd seen the water close over her, no one could have survived such a tidal wave, and if by some twist, she _had_ survived, wouldn't they have heard something from her by now - something besides uncanny hauntings?

Too dumbstruck to say anything at all, Warren stared at Scott, who sipped wine and watched the consternation he'd caused as if amused by it, and Warren was reminded of the calculating street kid he'd met thirteen years ago. Xavier's voice finally carried over the others, "Scott, as much as I'd like to believe that Jean could somehow have saved herself, I _felt_ her die." Frowning down at the table, he went on, "It was almost instantaneous as the wave hit. She was there, then she wasn't." He opened his mouth as if to say more, but shook his head faintly. "Whatever may be visiting us here - ghost, spirit, shade - Jean's body died at Alkali Lake."

"But did _Jean_?"

Xavier looked up and met Scott's eyes. "You asked me once if I believed in a human soul," he said. "I told you that I did."

Scott nodded. "I remember that conversation."

"Yet while I think some part of us does go on, that doesn't mean we are alive in any human, corporeal sense. Jean as we knew her died in Canada."

Thoughtful, Scott tilted his head back a moment while the others watched, slightly apprehensive. Then he downed the rest of the wine and set the glass on the table, rising from the seat to pace out a few steps and look up towards the vaulted ceiling overhead. "Jean!" he yelled - loudly. "Do you hear me, Jean? _Get the fuck out of my house! _Do you hear? Get the fuck out and leave me _alone_, dammit!"

The rest were gaping as he dropped his chin to regard them. "There," he said in a normal voice. "I don't know if it'll do any good, and the kids'll probably think I've lost the rest of my marbles, but if she really is here, she knows I don't want her anymore."

And he walked out the door.

* * *

No more ghostly incidents occurred after that, and Warren decided that he didn't want to examine why too closely. He was just content that they'd stopped.

After New Year's, he finally surrendered to pressure from his staff and personal assistant, Aaron Mayfield, to return full time to his apartments in the city - though he made sure to visit the mansion at least one weekend a month. As for Scott, the incident in the dining hall had represented a corner turned. He could have gone one of two ways there, but had chosen the way forward. Perhaps it had been spurred by anger, but whatever the cause, he'd finally shut the door on the part of his life that had included Jean and, if anything, seemed able to talk about her more easily after. Memories still choked him at times, and days came when he lacked energy, but it seemed a matter of sorrow, not profound depression or resentment. He missed her, but he'd moved past devastation, which colored his mourning gentler, less rageful. Sometimes he laughed and it didn't have an edge.

And without Scott to worry about so much, Warren finally got around to his own grieving. There was a night in late January when, visiting the mansion, he stumbled over a note of Jean's shoved into a kitchen drawer. It wasn't important - a grocery list, it looked like - but it had: _'linseed oil for Warren's wing ointment.'_

Yet there would be no more wing ointment prepared just for him by Jean, and struck through the heart, he began sobbing right there with the drawer hanging open and three students staring at him in discomfited concern. That night, it was Scott who guided him upstairs, then stayed in his suite until morning, and he was reminded of what Xavier had said to him that first day after he'd arrived in the wake of Jean's death**:** 'Neither of you is alone.'

They weren't, and if yes, he, Scott, and Jean had shared a bond both exquisite and rare, even without her in the triumvirate, he still had Scott, who still had him. They clung together like children, broken by the same loss, and Scott didn't seem uncomfortable with the physicality as he had been at times in the past. It was palpable comfort, the solace of touch, and anything else Warren may once have felt had been transformed by time into a communion more powerful and more resilient. Infatuation always died eventually. This was _love_, a rapport of souls, not desire or fleeting passion. Scott was his brother and friend, his Achilles, his alter ego.

So January passed into February, and Valentine's Day wasn't as terrible as it might have been. The students made sure Scott wasn't forgotten, and he accepted their well-intended if heavy-handed attention with surprising aplomb. It was more freshly broken hearts that dominated the mansion gossip - the disintegration of Bobby and Rogue. "I hope it doesn't affect their training," Scott confided to Warren, Ororo, and Kurt one evening as they sat on the balcony of Kurt's suite to share Kurt's Romani fruit tea and English scones.

"Do you think that we should switch the pairs?" Ororo asked. "Put Jubilee with Bobby and Piotr with Rogue?"

"No - this is something they have to learn to handle. Speaking from experience, you can't let a personal spat affect performance."

"But we still have hearts beneath the clothes, whether the clothes are cloth or leather," Kurt pointed out in his gentle way. "Sometimes they are wounded and need time to heal."

Scott shot him a glance from behind the glasses, but Kurt just smiled in that disarming way he had, making the words seem like an observation, not a reprimand - or a reminder - even though they were both. "Okay, I'll talk to them," Scott conceded, "see what they want." Warren hid his smile behind his teacup, winking at Kurt when Scott wasn't looking. Kurt's tail curled in answer.

With the advent of March, the weather changed, hinting at spring. Easter would be early this year and it had been almost five months since Jean had died, five since the Blackout. The world began to resurrect from its collective grief, not to mention its guilt over the actions of William Stryker. Fear of mutants seeped back into the social consciousness, and Warren read the papers with growing concern. "The moratorium is about over," he remarked to Scott one morning as they ate fruit and bagels at his New York penthouse. If he'd taken to visiting the mansion at least once a month, Scott had likewise taken to visiting him in the city. "And I should pinch you - you're not wearing green today."

"Neither are you."

"I'm protestant - I'm wearing orange." He raised an arm to show the rusty-pumpkin piping on his brown robe.

Scott snorted. "How'd you know about the orange and green?"

Warren folded the paper on the breakfast table. "My dear mother could never bear the American obsession with 'glorifying those damn Irish.' She insisted I wear orange on St. Patrick's Day."

Laughing, Scott helped himself to strawberries and melon. "She doesn't know your best friend's half Irish?"

"Oh, I remind her - subtly - when I especially want to annoy her. Mary Kate Manley is such a good, _Irish_ name."

"At least Summers is English. Well, maybe. Who knows?" Scott popped half a strawberry into his mouth and spoke around it. "'Daniel Summers' may have exited Ellis Island, but we have no idea what he was, going in. Dad thought he was German, fleeing the Franco-Austrian war only to walk smack into the Civil War here. There's irony for you."

"Mmm." Warren stood and flexed his wings. "I have to leave for the office soon. What are you and Colleen doing on your day off?"

"We'll hit the used bookstores probably. You could join us. Everyone else finds some excuse to get off work and start drinking by noon today."

"Can't. Have a meeting at ten. I'll call when I'm done and we'll meet for a late lunch - deal?"

So Scott helped him into the wing rack and he was off to helm Worthington Steel for another day. Warren enjoyed being CEO, even if he disliked the trappings of his social position. He'd inherited his grandfather's instinct for business, and relished the pressure-cooker thrill of power brokerage and boardroom chess - relished it more than his father ever had. It was almost four by the time he got away from the office and buzzed Scott on his cell phone. "Colleen and I were betting on how many hours past lunch you'd actually call," Scott told him.

"Sorry - I got swamped."

"Of course you did." But it was said with humor. Scott scolding him for losing himself in work would be the pot calling the kettle black.

Figuring out where they were, Warren headed downtown to meet them. "Are you sure about this, sir?" his driver asked, eyeing the packed pub across the street as he opened the car's rear door. O'Flaherty's tiny parking lot was full of revelers in ridiculous leprechaun hats and blinking green buttons, _Kiss me, I'm Irish_ t-shirts and a cascade of mardi-gras beads in green and silver and gold. The music coming from a covered tent (striped green-and-white, of course) was loud, and not the least Irish. A woman's voice was belting out something bluesy.

"It's fine," Warren replied, slapping the car hood to dismiss it. Then adjusting his jacket, he jaywalked the street to look for Scott in the crowd under the canvas. Colleen turned out to be easier to find. She sported metallic-green hair, glittery eye shadow, and a green-sequined bustier (though she lacked the cleavage to quite pull it off). "I need to call the fashion police," he told her, laughing as he came up behind her.

Turning in surprise, she swatted him. "Long time, no see," she said, not adding that the last time had been at Jean's funeral. She'd seen Scott since, however - several times - and Warren might have wondered at that, except all Scott's friends were women (not counting himself and Hank), and Scott and Colleen had maintained a regular correspondence since they'd left Yale.

Hearing Warren's voice, Scott turned from where he'd been watching the band, his head nodding in time to the Blues beat. He might not dance, but he could never stand still while listening, swaying or nodding, tapping a foot or patting a thigh. He still wasn't wearing green beyond some stray glitter he'd picked up from Colleen, but he was thoroughly drunk on Irish beer. Scott didn't let himself get drunk often, and never at the mansion with the kids there. Yet this wasn't the mansion, and he wasn't Cyclops tonight. Warren danced with Colleen, and made sure Scott had another Guinness when he'd finished the one in his hand. They ate corned beef sandwiches served in red-and-white paper trays, sitting close together on a curb outside in the cool March air, and for a little while, it felt like ten years before, in New Haven. No one in the crowd appeared to recognize Warren, but they probably didn't expect a scion of Worthington Enterprises to be hanging out at a pub somewhere between blue-collar and honky-tonk. Warren enjoyed the anonymity as much as the beer and company and corned beef. Squeezed in the middle, Scott turned to look at him at one point and grinned, face just inches away. It stopped Warren's heart the same as it would have when they'd been boys.

But this was now, not then. Standing quickly, Warren grabbed their empty trays and dumped them in a trash bin. "Ready to dance some more?" Colleen asked, oblivious. Scott, however, was frowning. Drunk he might be, but he knew Warren, and for the next hour, maintained a subtle distance, his intoxication turning from merry to brooding. Angry at himself for the momentary lapse, Warren tried to focus on Colleen and ignore Scott's mood. And Colleen, who'd spent plenty of time with them both, if not recently, finally picked up on the shift. Pulling Warren aside, she said, "Ignore him. He's in one of his funks."

"It's my fault - "

"It's _not_ your fault. I don't know what's up with him. One minute, he acts like the two of you are an old married couple, and the next, he's gone all prickly and 'I'm not gay.'"

Her wording made Warren blink. "He's _not_ gay."

"Well, no, not really. But with you? I've always thought he had a thing for you."

"Jean - "

"Completely aside from Jean," she interrupted. "I know he was in love with Jean, but she's dead. And you're not."

Disturbed, Warren walked away. "I need to go," he said. He knew she meant well, but her speculation on Scott's real feelings wasn't what he needed or wanted to hear. There was too much she didn't know, and too much water under the bridge. He didn't have a crush on Scott anymore, and anything he'd momentarily felt tonight had been old echoes and Irish Whiskey and that goddamned beautiful smile. And yes, if he thought Scott really did want something physical, Warren could easily have resuscitated the old longing, but it wasn't automatic any longer.

He'd walked down the sidewalk a few blocks from the pub, ignoring the surging crowd of late-night partiers and others. Now, he felt the phone on his hip buzz and pulled it off, opening it. "Where the fuck are you?" Scott said from the earpiece.

"I needed some air."

"Get back here before you get mugged, dammit."

So Warren turned and went back, and Scott was waiting outside the entry to the green-and-white tent. He just raised an eyebrow over the top of the glasses and gestured Warren inside. That ended that. He stopped brooding and Warren stopped worrying about it, and maybe a little slide back into the grand melodrama of their college years had been inevitable, until they'd remembered they were both closer to thirty than twenty. Later, in Warren's limo after they'd dropped off Colleen and were headed back to Warren's place, Scott tilted his head and got around to asking, "What was all that about earlier?"

Warren might have danced around it, but he was too tired, and too hot. Mid-March or not, it had been a sauna under that tent, and if Scott had been able to get away with a muscle shirt, Warren had to wear a jacket at all times. Now, he said, "Colleen was trying to play matchmaker. She meant well. She called us 'an old married couple.'"

Warren didn't know how Scott would take that, but Scott just laughed. "She said something similar to me. Told me I was being an ass. I was."

Warren shrugged. "You have your reasons."

"Maybe. Do you still want to sleep with me, Warren?"

The question was blunt and came out of left field, even under the circumstances. They hadn't really talked about it _for_ ten years. "Huh?"

"You heard me." But he didn't look angry, or disgusted, mostly curious.

"Not especially. Or not beyond actually _sleeping_."

A small smile played about Scott's mouth as he turned his head to glance out a tinted window. "I didn't think so." After a pause, he added, "One of the things I miss the most now is having someone else in the bed with me. You get used to another body."

"I do have a king-sized bed," Warren pointed out. "Plenty of room for two, even if one has wings."

**Notes:** A Festschrift is a collection of articles compiled in honor of a respected (usually emeritus) academic. The term is German, and translates as "publication in celebration." Not just anyone gets one, and they're usually put together while the person is still living, but there are cases of posthumous Festschriften. The Summers family history comes from the comics. We have no idea what Scott's mother's maiden name was, and even her given name occurs as 'Mary Katherine' in one place and 'Katherine Ann' in another. As I first encountered her as 'Mary Kate,' that's the name I use, even though it's less common. It is almost stereotypically Irish.


	15. Personal Journal: Color of Benediction

_**From Scott Summers' Personal Journal:  
**_

The next morning, I awoke to brilliant, filtered _white,_ as sun streamed through the wing arching protectively above me. I'd forgotten what it was like, this sense of being encased in something fragile and astonishing and pure. For a while, I just lay on my back, tucked up against Warren's side, and stared at the glow through ivory secondaries and primaries. These long feathers were huge and stiff, while the overlapping coverts along the bone were softer to the touch. Unlike a bird's wing, there was an extra joint in Warren's - batlike. It allowed him to fold them up in the rack, and even to curve them around his body without breaking them. Birds wings would have snapped. I ran fingers along the line of one of the primaries and he stirred. He can feel it. The wings are very sensitive, more than he often lets on.

Turning my head, I found him watching me, not entirely awake yet as he sprawled on his belly. "I have the mother of all headaches," I told him.

"Water," he replied. "Re-hydrate yourself."

"That means I have to get up." Although the pressure in my bladder was almost enough to make me do so. Almost.

He laughed and pushed himself to his knees, great wings balancing him almost effortlessly, even as sleepy as he was. Watching Warren move has always made me feel clumsy and graceless. Leaving the bed, he headed for his bathroom to fetch me water, then returned and helped me sit up to drink it, his hands warm on the bare skin of my back. "Thanks," I said.

"You'd better take it easy today; you were pretty trashed last night. It's Saturday. When do they expect you back at the mansion?"

"Didn't say. Obviously before Monday morning."

"Then sleep." And he pushed me back down - gently. "I don't think Charles will appreciate it if I return him a still-drunk Cyclops."

I might have laughed, but it would make my head hurt worse, so I slept instead. When I awoke a second time, the pristine white above me was gone. I was alone, and such a pang struck me that I choked. Grief always hit me at unexpected moments. But then my immediate physical needs intruded: I had a hard-on and a painful need to piss. And the headache. It was improved, but still there. By the time I got myself into the bathroom, my grief had faded. The erection was more stubborn. Sometimes it just won't go away without help, so I turned on the shower and shucked clothes to get in, wash away the sweat, and jack-off so I could empty my bladder.

I don't like masturbating. It feels faintly ridiculous, and sometimes I'm so self-conscious, I can't climax at all, no matter how badly I want to. This was one of those times. Angry and frustrated, I finally gave up and washed my hair. Then, of course, I was able to lose the erection and urinate. I hate my wacked-out physiology.

The strength of my sex drive is nature's ironic paradox. As a joke, Jean used to leave Viagra prescriptions in my sock drawer. Not because I needed them, but because I didn't, and it's a measure of my healing that she _could_ kid me about that. With her, I quit being embarrassed because she took my needs with a doctor's philosophic phlegmatism. "Everyone's sex drive is different, Scott. There's nothing wrong with you." And she was happy to let me use her body to relieve the itch, even when she wasn't particularly interested herself. In fact, part of learning to be a good lover had involved letting go of the idea that my virility depended on making her come every time I did. Things got a lot easier between us after the night she grew angry enough to point out she wasn't interested in an orgasm right then, but was perfectly happy to help me to one - and no, that _wasn't_ "using" her anymore than it was to ask her to telekinetically toss me clay pigeons at target practice. Sensitivity was lovely, but it could be carried too far. Bringing me off was neither an act of power over me, nor conceding to my wants, and it was a great act of trust for me to believe that. But leaving behind such warped expectations of what I should want and what she should want had opened a door for us to be more real.

After her death, my body had turned itself off. Depression, among other things. But of late, it was turning itself back on, and I didn't know how I felt about that. How could I _want_ when Jean was dead? Intellectually, I understood is was physiological - accumulation of sperm that had to go somewhere, whether in sleep or waking. That didn't have anything to do with the guilt, and guilt (of some kind) about sex was so _easy_ for me. These physical needs aside, though, what I really wanted was plain companionship. I missed sex with Jean, true, but as I'd told Warren last night, it was just having someone else in the bed that I missed most. Having someone else around.

Just now, he came back into the bedroom. "You're up." He was already dressed for the day, and as the wings were out, that must mean he planned to stay in the penthouse. The New York gossip rags considered him to be something of a recluse and a workaholic, and it struck me that I should make more of an effort to drive into the city to keep him company. Every time I came down here, (or when Jean and I had) Warren went all out as host. "There's still fruit from yesterday morning, or I could make something more substantial. Bacon, sausage, eggs, french toast . . ."

The mere thought of grease made me gag. "Fruit's fine. Let me brush my teeth and I'll be out."

"I'll set the table." And he left, the familiar gust of wind from his wings marking his passage. Finished, I put the toothbrush away and turned to find a stray covert feather on the carpet. Bending, I picked it up and ran the bit of white fluff over my fingers, and smiled. I could get used to waking up under his wings, which in turn reminded me of Colleen's declaration that Warren and I were an old married couple. She had a point.

This wasn't what I'd had with Jean. It never would be. And didn't need to be. Relationships aren't interchangeable like car parts - switch out the broken fan belt for a new one. They don't offer the same things or fill the same needs, and there are all kinds of intimacy. We limit ourselves if we define it too narrowly. Over the past ten years, Warren, Jean, and I had let convention define our relationship: "lover" versus "just friend," as if I loved Warren less. I loved Warren _differently_. I didn't want to have sex with him, and might never want it, though the mere idea of it no longer sent me into suppressed hysterics.

But I liked sleeping with him, and sharing breakfast when we woke; I complained about the latest batch of math tests or a glitch in the Danger Room, and he complained about trends in the stock market or the price of rice in China (the two weren't necessarily unconnected, in his case). I didn't understand half of what he said, and he didn't understand half of what I said, and it didn't matter. It was just time spent, and having someone with whom to spend it. I wasn't sure what to call us. We weren't lovers, but buddies don't sleep together, and roommates don't keep separate homes. "Friend" would have to do, as it had for years, but I was only now coming to appreciate that I didn't have to let common assumption define what that meant for _us_. Human bonds resist pigeonholing, and the rest of the world could just damn deal.

* * *

**Note:** Once again, I owe a debt of gratitude to J. B. McDragon, Epona Harper, and Ashlan for all the lovely details on how Warren's wings might actually work, and to J. B. for explaining the limitations of bird's wings.


	16. interlude 1: Fianchetto

_"Salve, Alba Regina! Salve!"_

So they hailed their new White Queen, arranged as they were into double lines of eight each, facing one another across the choir, behind and to either side of a large black-draped altar with the motto '_Fay ce que vouldras_' (Do what thou wilt) stitched in white and gold. A profusion of white and black candles illumined a grand feast spread on the wide altar, to be consumed later, and to either side of the altar squatted incense burners wafting the sweet stink of cannabis. Together with the candles, and the torches set in the stone walls along the chapel nave, smoke had turned the air thick and dim. The two courts were dressed in white and black as well - two courts, but many factions. It amused Sebastian Shaw to keep them divided so, and off balance.

The white-caped court was missing its center as their king stood before the altar, his new queen kneeling before him so that he could cloak her with white ermine and invest her with the linked gold and crystal girdle that traditionally belonged to her as the symbolic incarnation of Venus, as well as a staff that bore a white swan atop with diamond eyes. A diamond tiara sparkled in her pale hair beneath a crown of flowers and she'd left the front of her robe open enough to show the choker of diamonds ringing her pretty neck, dazzling her slightly decrepit king.

"And we call such an aged creature _Apollo_," whispered the woman on Sebastian Shaw's right - his Black Queen, three-faced goddess, lady of the night, Selene Gallio. "Why can I not have my brother king for this meal?" Her eyes glittered slightly red with a fire of banked hunger.

"It's too soon," he murmured back from his black granite throne, one elbow resting on the arm, two fingers pressed thoughtfully to his lips. In his right hand was the ribbon-wrapped thyrsos - the staff of Bacchus, symbol of his office.

"Too soon, too soon. You are like the king piece indeed, moving one step at a time and just as useless to winning a match - only to losing it."

"And you rush things. Hasty strategies are doomed to fail, my Hekate."

She snorted. "We are three of four now, and half of each court - so close, Sebastian. I see no reason to continue these baby steps. Let's sweep clean the rest of the board."

Shaw didn't answer, merely shook his head. Selene had her uses, but neither strategy nor patience was among them. Thus, he'd groomed Emma and disposed of that patsy Paris Saville as soon as his brilliant child was ready. Yet they couldn't move against Edward Buckman too quickly or people would wonder at two accidental deaths in the white court so closely spaced together. But there was another way. Turning, he glanced at his Black Bishop - Nathaniel Essex. "When's the delivery?" he muttered, too low even for Selene to hear.

"Later tonight. When the sheep are sleeping it off." The torches in sconces danced in hidden drafts, casting odd shadows onto his half-concealed face. Suitably sinister. But even had Shaw been able to see his whole expression, he doubted he could have guessed what the other man was thinking. Essex was an enigma, and Shaw might have feared for his own position, except that Essex had said bluntly that he had no desire to be king, and Shaw believed him. He hadn't even wanted to be bishop - "These titles are a silly child's game, Sebastian" - but Shaw had persuaded him that he was needed in the black court. Shaw had never quite trusted Harry Leland. Now Leland stood on Selene's right hand, and Essex on Shaw's left.

The formal investing had finished; it was time for the party, and that was his duty. Rising from his throne, Shaw swept down to join his brother king at the altar, his chthonic lady following in his wake, and the rest of the two courts descending as well to ring the altar area, black and white, black and white. Shaw could taste their anticipation, rich and strong and sharp, like wine. First he stirred the incense burners, and new smoke clouded up, adding to the sweetness already in the air. Even Shaw's own head was spinning, and he usually prided himself on control. But what was control without the ability to leave it behind at the right time? _Logos_, or Reason, was the provenance of his brother king, along with measured art, but _Bakkheia_ - holy madness - was his. Taking the wine _rhyton_ from the altar, he first poured a small vial of poppy juice into the liquid, then splashed a little red onto the marble floor in front of the altar and cried, "_Euoi, Bakkhios!_"

"_Polygethes Bakkhios!_" answered the other voices. "_Tou Dios, Bakkhios. Bakkhios, euoi!" _Next, Shaw poured wine into a large, flat cup called a _kylix_, and took the first sip himself before handing it to Buckman - the White King - who took the next, and passed it on. When everyone had drank, the cup circled back to Shaw, who emptied it and returned it to the altar while the ring began to move counter-clockwise around the altar in measured, precise steps_,_ chanting to Dionysus BacchaeusThe circle moved faster. Reaching out, he snared their new White Queen from the line and dragged her into his arms at the circle center, before the altar. She turned her face up to his, eyes shining, blond curls spilling over his arm. This was their moment. Bacchus had his Venus. Pulling the ermine off her shoulders, he tossed it aside, then tipped the _rhyton_ to spill blood-red wine down her front, anointing her with the sacred vine while dancers' feet pattered and spun. This was the madness of life that led to the little death. _Zoë Bakkheia_. This was his duty and privilege.

Grinning, Shaw took his dagger from its place at his hip and slit the front of Emma's wine-spoilt dress, baring her young pale body down to the crystal girdle, like a sacrifice.

Sex and death. All else was illusion.

* * *

Hours later, Shaw lounged under furs with his White Queen in an alcove off the main chapel. Above them burned an ancient lamp casting shadows up onto a Madonna, breast bared to suckle the Christ child. As a boy, that had been Shaw's favorite icon, and not for any spiritual reasons. He'd known even then that he had little use for religion in the usual sense. Sacrilege excited him. In school, he'd read the classics, and Byron and Shelly, too, fascinated by the freedom of the classical world. Later, he'd read the forbidden Aleister Crowley by flashlight under his covers. The Jesuit priests hadn't been amused when they'd found his copy. His father, however, had been. Essau Shaw had replaced the confiscated copy of Crowley's _Book of the Law_, and Shaw became a passionate devotee.

_"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."_

Now, the alcove's black velvet curtains were pulled aside to reveal Essex and, annoyed, Shaw sat up. Emma turned her blond head to regard Essex with cat-eyed displeasure, which, even at twenty-two, she had down to an art. "Enjoying yourself, Nate?" she asked, turning over so that the white satin sheets slipped down to her hips, revealing shallow, perky breasts and ivory skin.

Essex pursed his lips in annoyance. "Don't forget your place, child. And don't assume your wiles work on me."

She tilted her head to glance at Shaw upside-down. "He really is a monk, our bishop."

"My bishop. Yours is cavorting with Virginia, I believe."

"If I were you, Sebastian," Essex said, "I'd worry rather more about your queen." And he tossed the Lyre of Apollo onto the bed. "I believe you will need to find yourself a new White King after tonight."

Shaw exploded to his feet, stark naked though he was. He didn't need to ask Essex what she'd done. "That _bitch_!" he thundered. It echoed off the walls and whispered past the velvet curtains. "_Selene!_"

Fortunately, most of both courts were drunk and high enough to be dead asleep (although not as dead as Buckman, apparently). After a few minutes, Selene came . . . but not creeping. Her smile was wide as she slid in to slink past Essex, who regarded her - and her snake - with profound distaste. "You _bellowed_, my lord?"

"What the hell did you do?"

She actually had the audacity to lick full lips. "You had your fun. I had mine." She looked him up and down - flaccid as he was now - and smiled. "Unfortunately any immortality you enjoy comes from spilled seed. I take mine more directly." Selene's mutant power involved energy absorption; it didn't grant her memories, or powers, but healing and long life - a kind of mutant vampire. Shaw wasn't entirely sure just how old she _was,_ but like Essex, she talked about Queen Victoria as if she could remember living then, and maybe even before that. She'd told him once that she'd come to the United States before they were united, but he hadn't been sure if she were telling the truth or pretending. Selene liked to play-act.

"I didn't give you leave," he snapped now.

She cocked her head like a bird of prey. "I didn't need your leave."

Exploding forward, Shaw grabbed a handful of her long dark hair, yanking her to her knees. She just grinned up at him while her snake raised its head to hiss. "Bitch," Shaw hissed.

"Bastard," she replied almost fondly, still grinning.

"It wasn't time," Shaw said. She just licked her lips again; she knew she had him. "You're only useful to me," he warned, "as long as you're useful to me."

This made her laugh. "But my dear Bacchus, you are useful to me only so long as you're useful to me." Abruptly, he found his fingers extricated from her hair and he was tossed backwards onto the bed. She stood, red fire running all along her form and her eyes red, too. "Don't presume with me, mortal man who thinks himself a god."

Yet the surge of her telekinetic shove only served to excite him, and his power. He felt it pumping in him like lust, and rose to his knees, blood surging. "Melodrama gets you nowhere. Remember, I feed you. But I feed you on _my_ schedule."

She hissed, rather like one of her snakes, and backed off. She'd first come to his attention when she'd been in trouble with the law. She had no self-control, making her too easy to trace to her crimes, and as the world had grown less wild, her main protection - ignorance and disconnection of communities - had disappeared. He'd offered her a good lawyer and assistance in feeding, if she, in turn, would obey him. Theirs was a useful symbiosis. He provided her with food, and she provided him with a means to virtually untraceable murder when he needed it. Still, she was a wild creature, and tested the bars of her cage on a regular basis. He should have taken more care tonight after her earlier comments. Now, he had a mess to clean up. But that could wait.

He glanced back at Emma on the couch behind him, but she appeared only interested, not afraid. She regarded Selene with a dispassionate, calculating attentiveness, and that - Shaw thought - was why _she_ was the White Queen, and his true partner. Then he glanced at Essex.

Essex stood against a far wall, arms crossed, observing their exchange like a preschool teacher, tolerant of spats among his charges. Annoyed, Shaw grabbed his black robe, flinging it around him, velvet soft against his skin. Then he settled himself into the chair beside the couch bed. "Emma," he said, "please call the others." It was time for a meeting of the true Inner Circle while the rest of the court slept, sated.

Within five minutes, the rest had arrived - Harry Leland, the other Black Bishop; Roberto DeCosta, a former classmate of Emma's and a Black Rook; Shaw's son Shinobi, a Black Knight; Donald Pierce, Emma's White Bishop; plus a half-dozen others of mixed colors. Shaw turned then to Essex. "You promised delivery."

"I did," Essex replied, and drew out of his robes a tiny vial of bile-green solution as well as a cell phone. He spoke softly into the phone while extracting a syringe from another pocket. Within minutes, a second man entered the room through the chamber door behind, pushing an unconscious figure on a gurney. "Thank you, Strife," Essex said, then indicated the comatose body. "Our subject." Pulling back the hood, he revealed a hairless skull covered by pea-green skin. "Even unconscious, his power is in effect - which means none of yours is." He smiled faintly at them. "His sort, however, represent an evolutionary dead-end. Mutants should be a step forward, not a grotesque step back." Filling the syringe with green solution, he exposed the green boy's inner elbow and plunged the needle into the vein. Syringe empty, he removed the needle and released the arm. "Take it back now," he said to the man, apparently Strife. "It's time to plant our Typhoid Mary." Shaw didn't miss the fact he'd called the mutant an "it."

"Yes, sir," Strife said now, rolling the gurney away. Shaw assumed him already inoculated, just as was Essex, no doubt, himself. In fact, there had been no reason for Essex to inject the virus _here_ in the chapel instead of in his labs, but Shaw had long ago discovered that Essex enjoyed an audience.

From yet another pocket, Essex pulled a bag of syringes, one for each Club member in the room. "Everyone, please roll up your sleeves." And pulling the first syringe from the pack, he turned to Shaw, who offered his arm.

The inoculations didn't take long, and when Essex was finished, pudgy Leland asked, "You're quite sure these shots will work?"

Essex raised an eyebrow. "Don't you think it a bit late now to question either my expertise or my loyalty?" Shaw knew he couldn't stand his fellow bishop, though his tone was perfectly deadpan. "The virus is designed to target lesser-evolved mutant genomes." His lips curved into a sly smile. "I'm sure that such a specimen as yourself has nothing to fear, Harry."

And Leland looked completely unsure whether to take that as a threat or an insult. He should probably have taken it as both; Shaw had demanded printouts of his own DNA and his son's, in order to verify that they possessed the requisite markers to make them resistant, though that assumed Essex was above-board in all his information. Shaw thought he probably was, at least in this. After all, it was Shaw who paid the bills for Essex's research, and killing the hand that fed him wouldn't be smart on Essex's part, especially not when there was no _cui bono_ to be had by Shaw's death. Quite simply, Essex had more reason to keep Shaw alive than to kill him, and Shaw trusted that kind of pragmatism more than loyalty or emotional attachment.

Now, young Roberto DaCosta spoke, but to Shaw, not Essex. "I still don't know if this is brilliant or stupid. Aside from pharmaceutical stocks, what does releasing a mutant-targeting disease get us, when we're mutants, too? And how do we know it's not going to mutate? Isn't that a problem with viruses?"

Essex snorted. "Please, infant. This is not a natural retrovirus. Entire sections of its genome have been removed, rather than a few nucleotides. Mutating significantly would be extremely difficult for it, at least in the short term. And not only does it require the X-gene to turn on and become lethal, but a fairly specific, unevolved form of the X-gene. All mutants will catch and suffer from it - and non-mutants are carriers - but only _primitive_ mutants will die, strengthening the mutant gene pool overall. Given time, yes, it might become more virulent due to deletions and duplications in the RNA sequence . . . but it won't run unchecked that long, will it?" His eyebrow went up.

DaCosta glared at Essex, but turned to Shaw for confirmation. Shaw merely nodded.

"But I still don't get why we created a virus to target _mutants_," DaCosta said. "Isn't that hurting our own kind?"

Robed now, Emma Frost sighed from where she lounged on the bed. "I'm afraid Roberto absorbed too much of Charles Xavier's ideological pap."

"I did not!" DaCosta snapped, his youth making him defensive.

"Roberto," Shaw said, voice tinged with exasperated patience. "Releasing a lethal epidemic virus into the normal human population could create an crisis of such magnitude that we couldn't hope to control it. That hardly serves us, does it? Sometimes a tempest in a teapot is more productive than the Tri-State Tornado. There are many fewer mutants, and this won't kill all of them, or even a majority of them -"

"Though that will, no doubt, take some while for the CDC to recognize," Essex interjected. Academic ego strutting, Shaw thought.

"In any case," Shaw went on, "The virus will also allow us to expose mutants in rival positions of power. We have the vaccine. They won't. We can remain hidden. They can't, even if they don't die of it. We have a list of known mutants who remain concealed from the larger public. After this, they won't be."

Shaw lounged back further in the chair cushions. "This isn't just about economics, Roberto, but about _power_ - the power of exposure versus concealment, and the power of threat that creates both fear and crisis. And _crisis_, managed right, provides the best of opportunities. We will certainly offer the vaccine, "discovered" in due course, and make a reasonable profit. But we will benefit more from the crisis."

* * *

**Notes:** My sincere thanks to Leslie for her assistance with all things viral, though any errors are a result of my own limited understanding. Fianchetto is a chess move that pushes a bishop to the full extent of his sidewise motion. Cannabis does come in an incense form, although it's rather less potent that way. The original Hellfire Club made much of church terminology and design for purely carnal purposes and the party is based (very) loosely on tales of the Club's orgiastic rites. The quote on the altar cloth does come from the original Hellfire club, and was later used by Aleister Crowley. The Bacchant chant is taken from Euripides. The Tri-State tornado was a famous 1925 twister that crossed three states, caused hundreds of deaths and did more damage than any tornado in U.S. history.


	17. Sweet Dreames & Flying Machines

On June 23rd, the reborn Lady of the Lake left Alkali behind her. If she'd been looking at a map, she'd have found herself in the Reidemann Wildlife Sanctuary, Taseko Lakes region of Northeast British Columbia, along the edge of the Canadian Rockies. Drawn by the startling beauty of the mountains in summer, she turned in their direction, but something buried deep in her mind also pulled her northwest. If she didn't know exactly where she was - couldn't remember - she knew that if she headed that way, she'd end up in Alaska. And Alaska was somehow familiar.

She didn't walk, precisely. She didn't float, precisely. She didn't fly, precisely. If she wasn't corporeal, she also wasn't invisible. Animals who saw her coming fled, as if she were the licking danger of a forest fire. Her form was indistinct, but solidifying. No longer was she the will-o-wisp that had flitted about the lake, barely seen. This beautiful world had edges and gravity, and she realized that she must have had them once, too. She hoped to find them again.

Not for the last time, she wondered who she'd been, and what she'd looked like.

The mountains were awing in their stark wildness, immense and beautiful and terrible. She felt at home there. They were old enough and strong enough and big enough to embrace her, and she might have stayed except for the pull that whispered, "Northwest to Alaska."

Passing over the border into Yukon Territory south of the MacKenzie Mountains, her phantom amble brought her over one of the various flight paths out of Anchorage to Calgary or Winnipeg, and because her sight didn't depend on mortal eyes, she glimpsed the shattered, scattered remains of a downed plane below her.

Planes, planes - hadn't she been on a plane? Hadn't she tried to save a plane?

Descending through the trees and brush, she investigated. The wreck looked recent, but not too recent. Summer weeds and vines were pushing up among the broken pieces, twining about torn metal, and wooden and plastic crates were scattered on the forest floor, along with half-dissolved cardboard boxes. The right wing was missing, and the tail had broken off, but the front portion, left wing, and cockpit were still reasonably well intact. Along one side, most of the business logo could still be read, even with the tail missing:

**SUMMERS AIR CAR**  
_ We get it there faster_

Not this time, she thought to herself - but that name . . . she knew that name. How did she know that name?

The pilot was still strapped into the cockpit, or at least, her remains were. The windshield had cracked and broken, and the roof had peeled back, taking her head with it. The remaining body had been nibbled at and decayed, yet enough remained for the Lady of the Lake to recognize this had been a woman.

Had it been her?

A plane, a plane . . . hadn't she tried to save a plane? She'd tried to save a plane. And she knew the name on the side of this one.

Had this been her?

She'd told him goodbye. She'd known she was about to die. She'd told him goodbye. She'd tried to save the plane.

Had this been her? _Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground._

He'd used to sing that for her. He'd had such a beautiful voice when he'd sung for her.

_Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone . . . I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song. I just can't remember who to send it to. I've seen fire and I've seen rain . . . But I always thought that I'd see you again._

I'll see you again, baby. I'll find you again.

Hanging about the neck of the corpse was an identification tag - a set of them really - and with a ghostly hand, she turned them so she could see the information printed there, and the picture of a woman with red hair.

She'd had red hair. She knew she'd had red hair. And she'd tried to save the plane.

This had been _her_.

Relief filled her, rather than disgust. She'd found herself. The face in the picture with its sharp features, wide eyes, and red hair - hadn't she seen a reflection in the mirror like this once?

This had been her. Madelyne A. Pryor - pilot, resident of Anchorage, Alaska, U.S. citizen . . . this had been her.

But what should she do now? How long had her plane been out here? Likely months, and what must her family - what must _he_ - think? By now, they'd surely given her up for dead. And she had been. Still was.

Wasn't she?

It was such an easy thing to reach out with her power . . . The bones of her body had been left mostly intact - missing head aside - though the left tibia was broken and the right ulna and radius. A little stitch and they were as good as new. (And why a pilot would know the names of every bone in the human body wasn't something she thought to consider.) Next came the reconstruction of overlying muscles - deltoids, sartoria, trapezius - and fixing the inner organs - large and small intestines, pancreas, replacing the missing liver (something had probably eaten it). The head was gone entirely, but she had the ID picture, and simply rebuilt it from scratch.

Her body. Whole again. It wanted clothes, she thought, and she rebuilt those, too, from the rotted scraps that had been clinging to her corpse. When it was ready, her fire moved over it like the Spirit of God over the waters of the deep, settling in, animating. The spark of life turned on in every cell, a vital jolt that reached into her very DNA, subconsciously altering it. The heart began to beat, the lungs drew breath, and her eyes opened -

* * *

Madelyne Pryor unhooked her restraints and stepped out of the plane she'd been unable to save. She was a long way from anywhere, and had to worry now about such things as an empty stomach and physical exhaustion. She would need to eat, and eventually, to sleep, but home called her - Anchorage. She knew Anchorage, yet anything else about who she'd been . . . she had no memory beyond vague impressions. She recognized rather than remembered. If she got back to Anchorage, surely there would be plenty to recognize? She'd know her home, her family - _him_.

Retrieving maps, she gave her poor plane one last glance, twisted on its side, white skin still visible under encroaching plant life. Then she set off walking through the underbrush, hoping to stumble over a road. Hadn't she seen one a little further down the mountainside?

Three hours later, she'd found not only a road, but a local farmer who - astonished to see a woman dressed in a flight suit out in the middle of nowhere - stopped his truck to let her get in. When he heard her story - or at least part of it - he was even more astonished, stopped the truck, and ordered her out again. "I don't know who the hell you are, lady, but I wasn't born yesterday!" And he drove away as briskly as he dared.

Eyes narrow, Madelyne watched him speed off but didn't stop him. She could have. Her power stirred, sluggish and sleepy inside solid flesh, but she banked it. Her brief encounter had still been useful, even if it hadn't gotten her into town. She'd _learned_ things, sifting the farmer's mind to gather information - knowledge of the common human realities that she'd forgotten in dying.

People didn't walk away from plane crashes unmarred, and with a casual thought, she fixed her clothing - torn again, singed in places - and added scratches and bruises to her body. She was also getting hungry, but realized that if she concentrated, she could make that go away. Her body worked like a normal body, but she had the power to move it past the constraints of human flesh.

So she was learning. And the next time someone stopped - a big van with family vacationers - she told her story with select modifications, while they ooed and ahed over the miracle of her survival and drove her as far as the city of Whitehorse, dropping her off at Whitehorse General Hospital. They would have stayed with her, too, but she assured them it wasn't necessary, and gave a little tweak to their minds so they believed her, and went on their way.

She checked into the hospital as Jane Doe 216, though she had identification cards (which she secreted in her flight suit and 'helped' the ER nurses to overlook). It was easier to concoct an amnesiac condition complicated by seizures until she could learn a little more and come up with a plausible story. She could hardly tell them the real one. She'd figure out later how long she should have been there, and fix her records.

For now, she let them dress her in a hospital gown and settle her in a room, her torn flight suit packed away. As soon as they were gone, she rose to head down to the staff room where the nurses ate and held shift-change reports. Those on duty saw nothing as she passed their station, and she planted the suggestion in their minds that the patient in 546 had been checked on already; there was no need to check her again. In the staff room, she seated herself at a terminal with web access . . . and looked herself up. If her "amnesia" were a convenient cover, it was also an honest one.

There wasn't much out there on Madelyne Pryor. She was listed as flight staff with Summers Air Cargo, and her name popped up in an old newspaper article about "Plants for Pooches," a fund-raising drive for the Alaska Humane Society, but that was it. She tried a different search method, and finally found the critical information she'd been hoping for - her own obituary:

_**Madelyne Pryor, 37**_

_Anchorage native Madelyne Angeline Pryor, 37, died October 23, 2005, in a plane accident as the result of the Blackout. Her body was not recovered._

_A memorial service will be held at 7 p.m. in the chapel of the Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery. In accordance with Ms. Pryor's wishes, donations to the Alaska Humane Society are requested in place of flowers._

_Ms. Pryor was born May 3, 1968, in Anchorage, AK, to Mary and William Pryor. She grew up in Anchorage where she graduated from high school, then served a tour of duty as a helicopter pilot in the U.S. Air Force, returning to Anchorage after being honorably discharged in 1999, to work for a private cargo and charter company._

_Her fiancé, Jake Adamson wrote: "Lynn was a talented pilot, a longtime volunteer at the humane society, and a good friend to everyone who knew her, two-footed or four-footed. She'll be sorely missed."_

_Ms. Pryor is survived by her mother, one sister Annabelle Pryor Kaplan, a niece, Jordan, two nephews, Michael and Garret, as well as her fiancé, Jake Adamson._

Finished, Madelyne - Lynn - sat back in the chair and chewed at her lower lip. Jake must be _him_, the one she remembered. She'd been in the armed services, engaged to be married, and had volunteered with animals. It pleased her to know that she'd cared about others beyond herself, creatures weaker and in need of protection. That _felt_ right.

But one part of the obituary she didn't understand. She'd died in a plane accident, certainly - but "as a result of the Blackout"? Had electricity failed somewhere and fouled up positioning radar? She ran a search of the Anchorage Daily News on the day of her death, to see if anything peculiar was mentioned, but had to look no further than the 28-point headline: **Death Toll Rising into Millions in Worldwide Blackout**, to get her answer. She spent the next two hours reading, and what she learned stunned her, even while the event itself _felt_ familiar, just as caring for the helpless had. That was good, wasn't it, to stumble over these familiar moments as she reconstructed herself? But how could she have known about these mental seizures if she'd been caught in one and lost control of her plane, dying as a result? How had she been able to say goodbye to Jake? Or had she imagined that part?

She had to get back to Anchorage. If she'd been "dead" since late October and it was now the dregs of June, she'd been gone for eight months. He'd been without her for almost three-quarters of a year. She worried about him, how he was doing, or had he moved on by now? Had he learned to live without her?

But first, she had to prepare for that return. Dead people didn't rise from the grave, but from what she'd read, she gathered she was one of these "mutants" - and wondered if she'd known that before the Blackout? But she must have. Reading about mutancy on Wikipedia, she'd known much more than the little, potted article had said - had even known what parts were wrong, and which were right. Thus, she must have realized she was a mutant, just as she understood that her powers involved telepathy and telekinesis, and surmised that together, they'd somehow prevented her from dying, or at least had kept her spirit from departing this world, and then had allowed her to reconstruct her body. _Normal_ human beings couldn't do that.

Yet given the current social tension, she didn't think it wise to descend on Anchorage, announcing she was a mutant who'd escaped death eight months earlier. A clandestine approach was advisable, which meant coming up with a story of where she'd been since October. She'd already invented the bare bones of that with her story of amnesia, and it now remained only to fill in the rest of the details.

It took her the rest of that evening, visiting different hospital departments to construct her medical past. Part of her knew such cavalier telepathic intervention wasn't right, but it was _necessary_. And it was easy - grew even easier as she worked. In fact, she learned that she could reach halfway across the city to the police station without being there physically, sliding into the mind of the officer in records to create a file detailing her 'discovery' wandering aimless in the winter snow, wounded, with no memory of who she was or where she'd come from. Given the enormous caseloads at the time, her situation wouldn't have been unique enough to attract special attention.

At no point did it occur to her to wonder how she could concoct the correct medicalese for her hospital records, or why - if she'd been powerful enough to rebuild her own body - she hadn't been able to keep her plane in the air? Her reasoning processes were still spotty and imperfect. She also didn't give thought to the cost of eight months of intermittent neurological care as an unidentified indigent, even in the less expensive Canadian system. At least she did give some thought to where she might have spent time out of the hospital. It was a small city, nestled among mountain lakes with a view of the MacKenzie Range in the distance. There wasn't a slum area like one might find elsewhere, and the wintertime temperatures made living on the street all but impossible anyway. She settled for giving herself a maid-service job in one of the bed-and-breakfasts, something temporary that provided shelter and wouldn't be impossible for her to hold even with neurological damage. In order to avoid inventing too complex a history, she left a general impression of being withdrawn and depressed, a woman who went about her work without much conversation and kept to herself in off hours.

All these details settled, she returned to her room, and the next morning when her neurologist arrived for rounds, she told him that she'd begun remembering some details, throwing out a bit of what she'd learned without being overly specific - working with animals, servicing planes, wearing an air force uniform . . . The latter was enough. Requesting information first from the RCAF, and then from the USAF, they were able to match her fingerprints to those of Sergeant Madelyne A. Pryor, honorably discharged and currently a resident of Anchorage, Alaska. The fingerprints weren't a perfect match, which could explain a previous lack of identification. The reason for that (Lynn could have told them) was because the skin of her hands had been mostly destroyed and she'd had to reskin herself, among other things. But with something specific to go on, the prints were good enough for a match, and when presented with her name, she 'pretended' to remember.

After that, things moved rapidly. Calls were made, final tests taken, and Jane Doe 216, now Madelyne Angeline Pryor, was discharged for the last time from Whitehorse General Hospital. Her utterly astonished sister drove up from Anchorage to collect her, and newspapers picked up the improbable story of the woman who'd "come back from the dead" after eight months.

Unfortunately, her miraculous recovery presented financial problems for her employer's medical insurance, especially as she'd been at work at the time of the accident. The Canadian hospital wanted payment for their U.S. patient, but insurance didn't want to pay - claimed the accident came from "extraordinary" circumstances that absolved them of responsibility - and Summers Air Cargo couldn't begin to cover million-dollar medical bills anymore than Lynn Pryor could. The fact she hadn't been at a veteran's hospital meant there was no assistance from the veterans administration, either. In fact, she could have argued that she hadn't been mentally competent to sign a release to pay the bills if her insurance defaulted, but that angle on the case would be raised only later, with the help of a lawyer.

On the personal front, Lynn's homecoming was both more and less complex. When her sister Annabelle arrived in the hospital waiting room, she stared at Lynn in her discharge wheelchair for half a minute, face sketched in awed disbelief, before running forward to embrace her, sobbing in joy and relief. "Lynn! Oh, my God, it really is you."

Eyes wet as well, Lynn held her tightly while reaching into her mind to extract every memory Annabelle had of Madelyne. Most of them were pleasant, aside from a small battle over Lynn's choice to go into the armed services instead of to college, and then Annabelle's worry for her little sister during Desert Storm, where Lynn had flown transport helicopters. When Lynn had come home after the war, she'd found every tree in Annabelle's front yard wrapped in yellow ribbons, and had broken down in tears.

Now, the two let each other go, smiling brightly despite wet faces. Lynn was wheeled out and bundled into Annabelle's car for the long drive back to Anchorage. On the way, Lynn asked for all the news and Annabelle chattered happily about her kids, their mom, plus assorted relatives, and even got around to joking, "I'll have to take you to see your gravestone!" In none of it, though, did she mention Jake Adamson.

"What about Jake?" Lynn asked finally and Annabelle shot her a glance that was difficult to interpret. Silence reigned for a few minutes until Lynn said finally, "Just tell me, Anna."

"The doctors say you had amnesia, and that memory sometimes comes back spotty. How much do you remember, from right before the accident?"

Disturbed, she admitted, "Not a lot, really. There are some pretty big holes."

In fact, there were a lot of big holes, and seeing Annabelle again hadn't jogged her memory as Lynn had hoped. To be honest, she didn't recognize Annabelle at all, but told herself it would come back soon, maybe when they arrived in Anchorage.

Now, Annabelle nodded. "You and Jake - you were having problems, Lynn. You'd been having problems for, oh, I don't know, several months. But I don't think you told me everything. You'd moved out of his house even before the accident, and if you two hadn't broken up, we were all waiting for the other shoe to drop, I guess. After . . . " she trailed off, choking a little. "After the accident, he did grieve. I think he felt even worse because you'd been fighting, so I do believe he missed you . . . "

She trailed off again and Lynn frowned, staring out the passenger side window. "I . . . sort of remember. I remember there was awkwardness, and . . . fights. Yes, I think there were fights. But I didn't remember until now -" She cut off, unable yet to share the memory of his desperation when she'd tried to say goodbye. "I think he still loved me. I still loved him."

Reaching over, Annabelle patted her thigh. "I think he still loved you, too."

"So what aren't you telling me? He's seeing someone else, isn't he?"

After a minute, Annabelle nodded. "I'm sorry, Lynn. And it wasn't immediate. But yeah, about two months ago, he started going out with Cara Woods - you know, she's on the board at the shelter."

Madelyne blinked twice. Shelter? Oh, yes, the humane society. She sifted the memories she'd lifted from Annabelle and realized that she'd met Jake Adamson while volunteering at the Alaska Humane Society. He was one of the directors. "Does he know? About me?"

Another pause, then Annabelle said, "We thought it might be a good idea to come get you first, get you back home, get you situated . . . ."

_Make sure I was in my right mind,_ Lynn finished silently, though she could hardly blame her sister. How strange all this must feel for everyone, but for Annabelle and her family, for Lynn's mother, even for her friends, her sudden return wasn't likely to upset any apple carts. Even the seizures listed in her medical records had been put there by Lynn herself; they weren't real, and she could dispense with them once back safely among her things . . . .

Which reminded her of something else. "How much of my stuff did you keep?" she asked. The question clearly caught Annabelle off guard, though Lynn could also sense that she'd anticipated having to tell her eventually.

"Well, we waited for a long time, as long as we thought we could hold out hope, but you'd moved out of Jake's place, and there was rent to pay, and all the animals . . . It's not like Curt or I make a lot of money -"

"I'm not blaming you, Anna. It's been eight months. I just wondered what might still be left."

"We gave away most of your clothes and jewelry, though I took a lot of it - we always were about the same size - so it won't be like you have nothing to wear. Jake wanted the engagement ring, of course. Sentiment - he didn't pawn it. At least, not as far as I know. We took Jenny, too, but we just couldn't take the rest. Rusty, Shadow, and Vernon had to go back to the shelter, especially Vernon. I know you could keep him, but he just . . . had so many special needs."

It took Lynn a minute to realize that Annabelle was talking about her cat and dogs. Jenny was the cat, but Rusty, Shadow and Vernon were all dogs she'd either brought home or been fostering. She tried to feel sad about losing them, but nothing emerged. Shouldn't she feel sad? "I'll miss them, but I understand."

"You can have Jenny back, of course, as soon as we can find you a place."

"Thanks."

They spent the rest of the ride discussing the small details. This, Lynn thought, must be how a POW felt, coming home after so long, but with a POW, there had always that hope. Her family had given up hoping and had buried her.

"This must be . . . really weird for all of you," she said as they passed a green highway sign announcing 27 miles to Anchorage. The sun was still up, though it was after nine in the evening. Summer had turned the pine forests a rich green.

"Lynn, we're just so glad to have you back." Her sister turned her head briefly from the road. "It'll be a little awkward for a while, but don't you think any of us minds that. We thought -" She choked. "We thought you were _dead,_ honey. But you weren't. We should have looked harder. We should have tried harder to track the path of your plane . . . "

"No," Lynn said. "Anna, even if you'd found the plane, you'd probably still have thought I was dead. No one can really quite figure out how I walked away from that. You wouldn't have had much reason to look for me."

"Maybe," her sister conceded, but she sounded unconvinced. Lynn didn't want to tell her that if she _had_ found the plane, she'd have found Lynn's body in it, and perhaps it was just as well that the plane had remained lost, or coming back would have been a lot harder, and would surely have entailed her family finding out she was a mutant. Among the things she'd picked up from Annabelle was that her sister hadn't known, still didn't know. Lynn wondered if Jake had known, or if she'd told anyone.

It was ten in the evening before they made it back to the house in which she'd grown up, and Lynn braced herself for a rush of memories as she knew visiting familiar places often aided the recall of amnesiacs. She wasn't sure what the effects would be on the resurrected dead, but thought surely, something would resonate. She was hoping for it. She wanted her life back.

Pulling into the driveway, they found every light on and the street lined with cars. It felt as if half of Anchorage had come to welcome her home, though it was just family and friends from the shelter, plus work colleagues (it would be a few weeks before the extent of the financial mess became known). There was cake and balloons and a lot of noise. Jake hadn't been told yet. "We thought morning might be better," her mother said, though Lynn wondered if he'd appreciate the delay, and who they were protecting - Jake, or her.

The gathering almost overwhelmed her, telepathically. All those minds. But at least most of them had memories of her at the forefront, which made picking up pieces easier, even if not all of them were pleasant. She felt as if she were assembling a three-dimensional portrait out of several different puzzles, and it was a lesson in just how differently various individuals could all see the same person - and not just because they knew different aspects of her history.

But she _didn't_ experience any sense of familiarity. They knew her, but she didn't know them, or this house. It had been easy, on the road, to feed off her sister's excitement and her certainty in recognition, but here, now, she felt herself withdrawing, confused.

Her mother seemed to recognize as much; she'd been watching Lynn like a hawk from the moment the van had pulled up the drive, reluctant to get very far away from her baby. Now, she drew Lynn off into the kitchen and took both her hands. "What's wrong, honey? Tired?"

"I . . . yeah, I am. But I don't . . . everyone came to see me. I don't want to seem ungrateful."

Shaking her head, Mary Pryor gripped her daughter's hands more tightly. "This must be just as much of a shock to you as it is to us. I think people will understand if you just want to get some sleep. We'll all still be here in the morning. And so will you." Spontaneously, she hugged her daughter, then went out to shoo the guests away. Half an hour later, she was taking Madelyne upstairs. "This is your old room. We thought you might like to spend your first few nights here - help you remember."

"Thanks, Mom."

But the room felt just as alien to her as the house, and she wondered why. Shouldn't she be recognizing things, not just reconstructing them from others' memories of her? There had been moments when she'd felt a touch of familiarity, but only a few.

Maybe she was expecting too much. True amnesiacs had brain damage, but it was the same brain damaged. Lynn's entire head had been _missing_, so she'd been forced to build a new one from random particles, her telekinesis, and the pictures on her ID cards. Any memories she had came from her spirit, and who was to say what kinds of memories the soul retained? Something, of course, but how much? She had what she had, and would be grateful for this much.

Sitting on her bed in the room where she'd grown up, hands between her knees, she let herself just be quiet a while, mind turned in on herself. All day and all evening, and for two days before, she'd been open to others as a matter of necessity, all in the pursuit of finding her way home, finding her way back to _him_. But here she was in a familiar-unfamiliar place, and he hadn't even been told yet. It wasn't what she'd thought it would be.

"You're just tired," she told herself. She needed to sleep. Things would look different by morning.

* * *

"Jake's here, honey."

It was her mother, standing in the door to Lynn's room, and Lynn felt seventeen, not thirty-seven, preparing for a first date. A pile of discarded clothing lay on the bed behind her; none of it had seemed right, as if it didn't fit her, even though it was all exactly her size. She'd settled finally on a pair of old jeans and a red-and-white dot-print top.

"Do I look okay?"

Mary Pryor grinned. "You look beautiful, though I haven't seen you wear that old thing in a while. You always complained that red clashed with your hair."

Lynn looked down at it and plucked at the lacy ribbon along the bottom. "It's not too bad, I guess." She let her mother usher her out.

It had been her sister who'd dropped by Jake's house that morning to deliver the news in person. After all, how does one gracefully say, "Your eight-month missing fiancée, who you were having trouble with, just turned up in Canada and we brought her home last night. Oh, and by the way, she doesn't remember everything." Lynn tried to imagine the expression on his face, but had a hard time imagining his face at all, though she'd seen it in the memories of others, and in the pictures her mother had brought to the breakfast table that morning - a tall, handsome brown-haired man with blue eyes, maybe a little pudgier around the middle than he needed to be but they were both getting older.

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, her mother patted her arm, then ducked through the hall into the kitchen - "I'll leave you two alone" - and Lynn entered the living room. It turned out to be less of a shock than she'd anticipated. Hearing her step, Jake turned and let out the breath he must have been holding. "Madelyne." For ten heartbeats, that was all he could manage, then he began to babble, "When Anna came by this morning to tell me - I didn't believe it. It didn't seem possible, after all these months, but she insisted. I must've run around the living room for fifteen minutes, trying to decide what to do first, whether to call you or come over . . . I know we didn't part on good terms, before you took that flight, so I didn't know if you'd want to see me . . . ."

While he chattered, she sifted his memories, adding them to her collection, completing a little more of herself. That took only moments, then she walked over to raise her hand to his lips, stopping his tumble of words. "Shhh. That was then. We have a second chance, Jake."

He sighed and clasped her hand in his, pulling it down from his mouth to rub his thumb over the back compulsively. "Yeah, we do." But she felt resistance thrumming in him. He wasn't sure he wanted a second chance, and she could pick up now on the underside of his feelings - the shock when he'd heard her plane must have gone down somewhere over the Rockies, but also a certain relief at a problem solved . . . then crushing guilt for that relief. He'd worked through much of it, though, and come out the other end enough to start seeing someone else.

"Anna told me about Cara," she said, and his neck and ears flushed red as he tensed. "You don't need to feel badly about it. I was dead, as far as you knew. I wouldn't have wanted you to put your life on hold."

Some of his tenseness disappeared, but not all of it. He was still compulsively rubbing the back of her hand with his thumb. "It does make things kind of . . . hard." He loved Lynn - she could feel it - but it was an old love, previously comfortable and lately tense. His relationship with Cara was new and exciting, and he was caught up in the flush of those stronger feelings. They overshadowed what he still felt for her.

And Lynn understood that a significant part of Jake didn't want to return to what they'd had. Reluctance had dug in claws since hearing she was back. Duty, disbelief, and remembered affection had brought him here this morning - not excitement.

Yet how did this match the memory she held close to her heart of his panicked desperation when he'd realized he was about to lose her? From his own mind, she gathered that he hadn't known she was dead until they'd brought him word after the fact.

Had she made it all up? During her final moments, had her need to be missed _that_ much, loved _that_ much, created a false memory strong enough to hold her here - stubborn - even after her body had died?

She'd come back for a man who didn't really want her back.

And there was something about that, too, which felt familiar - that rejection. "Get the fuck out of my house!"

He'd said that to her during a fight two weeks before her final flight, so she must have known how he felt all along. She'd just needed to believe something else so badly, it had held her to life.

She twisted her fingers out of his grip and smiled a little sadly. "Sometimes you get a second chance. But sometimes you just have to start over from scratch. Maybe that's what we need to do - see if anything's still there."

A surge of hope mixed with a weight of disappointment in him - but the hope was stronger. "You think so?" He wasn't fighting her.

"Yeah, maybe. If it was meant to be, we'll find it again. We can start slow - get to know each other again. I'm still . . . trying to find my way. There's so much I only half remember."

And his mixed feelings became a single-minded concern; he led her over to the couch and they sat down together, turned a little so they could face each other. They weren't touching. "Anna said you had amnesia, and seizures - that you'd somehow been thrown clear of the plane when it crashed, and hit your head. What happened after?"

And thus, she spent the rest of the morning relating her nonexistent eight months in Whitehorse, and hoped that she'd remember the details for later, and that he wouldn't make any effort to verify it all. She doubted he'd think to, but just to be sure, she planted a block in his head. If he should ever seriously think of checking, he'd quickly lose interest.

He left after lunch, and Lynn spent the rest of her first full day back at home wandering from room to room, trying to remember things. But nothing came - no memory that wasn't taken from the mind of someone else, no memory of a private moment that was wholly her own. She felt as if she watched it all from some great distance, her deep emotions closed off behind glass while she borrowed the feelings of others, just like she borrowed their memories. Numb. The next day wasn't much better, or the day after, and as the first flush of excitement over her return faded, she could sense a growing confusion among her family, too. Sometimes she acted just like the Lynn they remembered, but then she'd do something, or say something, and she stopped being anyone they recognized.

The volunteers at the shelter noticed it first. In an effort to get back into the swing of her old life, and prove she wasn't avoiding Jake now that they'd officially broken up, she headed down to the humane society on her third day back, driven by her sister because she wasn't yet allowed behind the wheel of a car until cleared by a neurologist. When she arrived, her old friend Nick took her back to see the dogs. Vernon, she was told, was still there; they hadn't been able to place a blind German Shepherd mix with serious separation issues. In fact, she'd come today half intending to reclaim her dog, and entering his kennel, she thought the poor animal might hurt himself leaping around like he was, so excited to smell her and hear her voice again. But within five minutes, things went bad.

"I don't know what's wrong," she said as they were walking him back in the yard. Vernon had begun pulling and misbehaving and even leaping up on her though she tried to shove him down. Finally Nick had been forced to take the dog back to his kennel. He was frowning when he returned.

"You can't let him dominate, Lynn - you know that. You used to be about the only volunteer who could handle him at all."

"Maybe I've lost my touch," she said lightly.

Yet it turned out to be true. She didn't know dogs, which became clear after just a few days back at volunteering. Lynn the dog expert no longer had the right body language. So they took her out of dog work and put her with the cats. She knew cats well enough, but it was an accidental incident with a pair of rescued horses that revealed an unexpected talent with an animal that - by all accounts - she had no knowledge of. Madelyne Pryor hadn't even _liked_ horses. Until now.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say you were a changeling," her mother told her one afternoon as she assembled a microscope that her sister had bought for her nephew as a birthday present. Neither Annabelle nor Curt had been able to make any sense of the directions. 'It can't be that hard,' Curt had said. 'There aren't that many pieces to assemble, but I'll be damned if I can figure out how that thingamajig fits into the base and how to get the mirrors in there.' Off the cuff, Lynn had offered to try - and had found it easy, almost familiar. She barely glanced at the instructions.

"Madelyne Angeline, you hated biology in high school!" her mother teased now.

"I took mechanical engineering courses in training, Mom. If I can fix a plane engine, I think I can put together a microscope."

"I guess."

But similar incidents kept piling up, and she half-feared her return to work, two weeks after she was back in Anchorage. A neurologist had cleared her for driving and flying, and it was time to get back to her job. She had bills to pay and her old life to slide back into. Yet she wondered if she suddenly wouldn't know how to fly anymore, like she didn't know dogs. Fortunately, climbing into the cockpit of a DC-6 and sitting down behind the controls relieved that worry. It all came back to her as she ran a standard check; this _was_ something she knew. She didn't take the plane up, but she'd needed to prove to herself that she was a pilot. The office scheduled her for a short hop the day after next and she went home, but the very next day, they called her into the main office and sat her down, only to hand her a pink slip.

"I'm sorry, Lynn," said the business manager, Ted Konner. "We just - we can't afford to keep you on. We've had to swallow the cost of the plane that crashed, plus the cargo - and no, no one blames you for that. But the simple truth is that our insurance didn't want to cover it. They're calling the Blackout 'undeclared war' and 'civil revolt,' and according to their policy, that falls under _exclusions_."

He took a breath, then continued. "We've got the same problem with your hospital bill. Whitehorse General is requiring payment because you're not a Canadian, but our insurance is refusing to cover you for what happened. That's not unusual. There were so many claims made all over the country - all over the world - that no insurance company could keep its head above water if they'd answered them, so they've almost universally declared the Blackout falls under exclusions. One can understand, I suppose - but it does create a problem for who's going to pay. Disaster relief was offered to cover property damage and medical expenses, and a lot of that stuff was just written off - but we're long past the claim deadlines for assistance."

He sighed. "Right now, we're about two breaths from filing Chapter 11, and we just can't hire another pilot. That's what it would be, giving you work. We filled your position, and taking you back on would be hiring a new pilot."

She sat through this little speech, stunned into silence. They were firing her? "But I worked here first. I need a job. How am I supposed to pay my bills, Ted?"

"I understand, and I'm sorry - but the simple truth is that we can't pay ours, either."

"I worked here _first_," she said again.

"I know, but you were declared dead. There's just . . . we've got no precedent for this."

Abruptly furious, Lynn stood up. "I could take you to court!"

Konner raised both hands in a helpless gesture. "You can try, but it won't get you anywhere. You can't get blood out of a stone, Lynn. The company's going under - we've got no money to make us worth suing. My advice is to take your separation pay and apply elsewhere. It's not like there's a lack of cargo companies. I hear that even some of the biggies like Polar Air are hiring. You've racked up a lot of flight hours, plus you've got your record in the air force. You're a good hire. The only black mark on your record is the crash, but if there ever was an excuse of extenuating circumstances, that qualifies." She was still glaring, fists on hips, and he added, "Don't look at me like that. I'd say chances are ten to one that I'll be joining you on the job market inside a month."

Lips thin, she turned on her heel to stalk out, and two days after, official notice appeared that Summers Air Cargo was bankrupt, and a week after that, Whitehorse General Hospital started sending unpaid bills to her. Yet she no longer had a job - or insurance - to cover them. The irony of it all was that almost none of the services she was being billed for had actually been performed. She'd invented them to give herself a history. But they were in the hospital computer, and she could hardly deny them now without her new-found life unraveling, which would be far, far worse. So, desperate, she turned to a lawyer to see what could be done besides filing for bankruptcy herself.

Between losing her fiancé and her job, coming back from the dead was turning out to be a real drag.

* * *

**Notes:** Yes, the title (and lyrics quoted) reference James Taylor's _Fire and Rain_. Comics fans may recognize many of the bows to the original comics storyline. Madelyne Pryor was, indeed, employed by the Summers family as a pilot, though she was also a plant by Essex (a clone of Jean), not a real person - but of course, _she_ didn't know that. Also, when she was first introduced, her nickname was Lynn, not Maddie - the latter came later, and I've chosen to go with the original as I liked that Madelyne; I didn't like her much in X-Factor, where she seemed to undergo a severe personality shift.


	18. Meiyo

It was late in Logan's fifth month of living in Nagoya that something concrete finally turned up. He'd been to several places he remembered at least partly, but anyone who might have remembered him were either dead or long gone. By describing shops or streets as he remembered them, he'd been able to determine that he'd last seen Nagoya sometime in the early or mid-30s. And the profound differences between pre- and post-war Japan might have explained his constant sense of things being just a bit off.

Yet he'd learned little else in five months - such as why he'd been in Japan in the first place - and when one had only vague clues to begin with, uncovering more was extremely difficult . . . a matter of chance. Thus, it was chance that led to his keystone discovery. Taking advantage of a mild April day to amble through a section of Nagoya that he hadn't yet visited, he passed by the grounds of a Buddhist temple that - despite some differences (that tree there had been much smaller and no bushes had lined that fence) - he _knew_ he'd seen before. And not once, but many times. This recognition brought with it a terrible weight of devastation, and standing at the gate to the yard, he felt as if he stood at the edge of a sharp precipice. If he crossed it, he'd learn something about himself and his past, he was certain. But he also knew he might wish he hadn't. Stryker had warned him, back in Canada, that knowing his past wasn't necessarily something to be wished for - and he'd been angered by that because he'd suspected it was true, at least in part. He had the same sensation now. Perhaps ignorance really was bliss in some cases.

He'd never been fond of bliss. He crossed into the yard.

Most of the larger Buddhist temples in Japan had graveyards attached, and this one was no different. Logan let his feet lead him through tall gravestones, disconnecting his brain in a way that he'd learned since coming to Nagoya - down this cobblestone path, turn left here, then turn left again at this marker. It was a crowded place, land being at a premium in Japan. It was also full of crows, and he shivered unconsciously. Graves were grouped by families, the wealth of a clan evident in the fineness of the stone and etching, and those with recent dead were often decorated with flowers or tobacco or sakê. Some had salt for purification, some had little boxes where one could leave a note for the dead. They both were, and profoundly were not, like graveyards in the Americas or Europe.

He didn't wander long before he found whatever it was his body had remembered but his mind had forgotten - a tall, silver stone with the family name "Yashida." Someone had been by recently; there were fresh lilies in the vases, but Logan didn't see them, overcome by such a terrible rush of memory that it drove him to his knees.

"Mariko," he whispered, and heart-torn, wept before the grave of his fiancée, seventy years dead, by her own hand.

* * *

Memorial Day weekend saw commencement at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. This year, five students walked proudly in their black robes and mortarboards. (It should have been six, Ororo thought sadly.) Marie D'Ancanto, Bobby Drake, Jubilation Lee, Piotr Rasputin, and Cecelia Reyes. Three families showed up to sit beside them in the front row of the school's auditorium, and Scott Summers sat with Jubilee at her request, which Ororo found sweet.

But Scott's fill-in wasn't the surprise. The surprise came in the form of Logan, all the way back from Japan, to sit with Marie. No one had seen that coming, except perhaps Xavier. Certainly Rogue had steeled herself to sit alone. Unlike Jubilee, she didn't know any of the teachers well enough nor felt close enough to any - except Logan.

And Logan returned on Friday afternoon, though no one but the professor saw him until the baccalaureate service on Saturday morning before the actual commencement ceremony. He wore the same suit he'd worn to Jean's funeral, and looked just as uncomfortable, but also rather smug when a completely flabbergasted Rogue squealed in glee and came tearing down the main auditorium aisle, robes flying, to leap up on him in a great hug.

"Wouldn't have missed this, kid," he told her rubbing a thumb briefly over her cheek and following her down to the front row, where he sat between Rogue and Jubilee. Ororo watched Scott lean past Jubes to say something to Logan, then offer his hand. After a moment's hesitation, Logan took it and the two men shook briefly, then turned their attention to Xavier, who'd wheeled up onto the stage for the baccalaureate address - one devoid of obvious references to the mutant situation.

That was a concession to Bobby Drake, who still hadn't told his parents. Xavier wasn't happy about it, and had informed Bobby that he wouldn't ask any of the more obvious mutant students - or teachers - not to attend. He'd been willing to grant Bobby his caution when the boy had first come to the school, but had hoped Bobby would overcome it before graduation. Yet in the wake of events the previous October, he understood why Bobby now remained stubbornly resistant. That same sensitivity was why Kurt wasn't seated beside Ororo. She'd argued with him about that, but he'd insisted. "I understand Bobby's fears," he'd said, smiling in that gentle way he had. "It is not important for me to be there." Yet Ororo kept waiting for the other shoe to drop - someone to say something incriminating either to the Drakes or within their hearing. No one did.

With only five students, the ceremony began at 10:00 in the morning and was over by 11:15 - and that included Xavier's baccalaureate address. It might have seemed like a waste of time under the circumstances, but Xavier considered such markers important, especially to children who otherwise felt marginalized by the larger society.

After the service, there was a lunch buffet, but the graduation party that afternoon was the _real_ celebration. Parents weren't invited to that, except for Scott and Logan, who qualified as staff. By two, the student body had shucked dress clothes in favor of swimsuits and suntan lotion, but each of the graduates was expected to arrive in their mortarboards, whereupon they were ceremonially dunked (still in the hat) - and just how _that_ tradition had gotten started a few years back, Ororo couldn't now recall, but every school needed a few traditions, even Mutant High.

Logan appeared late, and not dressed for swimming. He ambled across to where Ororo was sunbathing on a lounge chair between Xavier on one side and Kurt on the other. He pulled up a third chair and plopped himself down in it while Ro shaded her eyes to watch him. "It is good to have you back, Logan," she said.

He simply shrugged, then turned to Kurt. "How you settling in, Elf?"

"Very well, _danke schön_." Kurt was grinning, and Ororo rolled her eyes behind her sunglasses at Logan's need to assign nicknames to all and sundry, but at least "elf" was superior to what Kurt had heard for most of his life - and perhaps Logan recognized as much. Their Wolverine had more perception than they sometimes credited him, even if, at other times, he had remarkably less than he needed.

"How was the flight?" Xavier asked now.

"Long. I'm a bit jet-lagged."

"Understandably."

"How did it go?" Ororo asked.

Logan's expression was pained. "Figured out a few things." But he didn't elaborate, and Ororo, who prized her own privacy, could recognize a dodge when she saw one. She pressed no further. Perhaps Logan would one day tell her more, but for now, she was simply content that he'd returned, making their family complete once again, or as complete as it could be, with one forever missing. Her eyes drifted towards Scott, in the pool with the kids. (Give him water and he was in it, fish that he was.) On the pool edge, Warren perched, wings unfurled for balance. If Scott hit the water at any opportunity, Warren avoided it. "I'm not a duck," he'd said, on more than one occasion. She smiled at that, and watched Warren watch Scott. The two men might have managed to keep their affair - or whatever it was - a secret from the children, but she observed better, and had caught one or the other exiting the "wrong" suite on a weekend morning.

She thought Jean would have approved.

"I heard Marie and Drake broke up," Logan said suddenly, on her right.

"Yes."

"He hurt her?"

Ororo slid her eyes sideways, studying Logan from under lowered lids. "No. In fact, I believe that it was she who broke up with him."

"Ah." He nodded once, as if he approved, and Ororo suppressed a smile, wondering if he would ever find any man good enough for his "daughter."

"She said you an' One Eye have put 'em in the Danger Room," Logan went on. "Started their training."

"Yes, we have."

He was silent a while. "I don't know what I think about that," he told her finally.

"I don't, either," she admitted. "I wish it did not have to be."

"But better she know how to defend herself, if it comes to that."

"Precisely."

* * *

Artie was trying to figure out just what to make of the new kid, Illyana. She was Piotr's younger sister, but as different from him as day from night. He thought her, well, kind of _moody_. A lot of kids were jerks, or moody, or really shy, when they first got to the school, but that was usually because they didn't know anything about mutancy, or had been rejected by their parents, or something bad like that - which didn't apply here. Illyana certainly hadn't been rejected by her family, who were downright supportive, Artie thought, and she'd even been to Xavier's before, but as a guest, not a new enrollee. Now, she sat on the end of a lounge chair, knees drawn up and arms around them, glaring out at the rest of the student body around the pool. She wasn't even wearing a swimsuit. Artie and Terry had come over to talk to her as Terry was to be her new roommate.

"So," Terry began with a glance at Artie, rolling her eyes where Illyana couldn't see. "Y'gettin' settled in all right?"

Illyana just looked up at her, and didn't reply. She would have been a pretty girl if she'd _smile_ now and then, Artie thought. Terry tried again, "Pete's pretty well liked around here. You'll find lots of folk who'll want to make you feel welcome."

"Everyone loves Piotr," Illyana said finally; she had no more of a Russian accent than her brother did. "Including me. But he's sometimes a little too inclined just to _settle_, and make the best of it." Saying that, she got up and walked away.

"What bug crawled up her butt?" Terry muttered, and Artie shrugged, rather glad she'd left. He didn't envy Terry rooming with such a sourpuss, but he wasn't inclined to worry about Illyana, just now. Today, he had other concerns. It had been exactly two weeks since he'd heard anything from Leech. Gaps had come in their communication before, but never one so long, and he'd told Terry about it before the graduation service, but she hadn't seemed concerned.

Now, he scribbled on his pad,_ Wanna - M-town nx wk?_

"I don't think that's any too safe, Artie. The papers've been full up with stories of muggings there, even in the daylight hours."

Artie nodded - he'd read the same, which was a good part of why he was worried. What if some bigot had caught Leech and beaten the crap out of him? How would Artie ever hear?

"Y'know," Terry said now, peering at him, "I think you oughta talk to the professor about him, if you're so worried. I know he said he don't want ta come here, but, well, the world's been changin' back to the bad times, these last few months. He'd be safer."

Artie shook his head, mouthing, 'I gave him my word.'

Shrugging, she said, "Sometimes you gotta break your word to keep faith, y'know?"

* * *

"Do you want my parents to talk to your parents?" Piotr asked Bobby in a pause between games of water volleyball. They were standing in the shallow end not far from where Kitty sat on the pool edge, her legs in the water, half-listening and debating whether to join in the next game. She wanted to, but didn't think it would suit her dignity as a newly minted junior. The older girls were all lying around in lawn chairs, working on their tans. Kitty supposed she ought to do the same, but she'd always found sunbathing rather boring and would rather play in the pool. Except that's what the little kids did.

"I don't want _any_body to talk to my parents!" Bobby was saying to Pete, irritated. "The less they know, the better. They'd make me come home."

At the sound of a raised voice, Mr. Summers waded over and Bobby hushed, but Mr. Summers just clapped him on the shoulder. "You're eighteen," he said. "Legally an adult. They can't _make_ you do anything."

Bobby swiped at the pool surface with the edge of his hand, sending up a shattering of droplets that turned to ice and fell back into the water. "There are a lot of ways to 'make' somebody, Scott." And inside Kitty, something thrilled to hear Bobby call their teacher by his given name, like a grown-up. But then - as Mr. Summers had just said - Bobby _was_ a grown-up, wasn't he? And so was Piotr. Not liking that train of thought, Kitty pursed her lips. Bobby was still talking, "They're the ones paying for my college. Besides, they're my parents. I don't want to lose them again, y'know?"

For just a moment, Mr. Summers looked pained, and Kitty wondered if he was thinking about Dr. Grey. "I know," he said.

"Bobby," Pete asked, "Do you _have_ them now, if they don't really know you?"

"They know all of me that matters," Bobby snapped. "What're a few genes?"

"Pretty significant," Mr. Summers said, then shook his head. "You didn't used to be ashamed of your gift."

"That was before I saw my mom's face when I told her about it," Bobby answered, sounding disgusted as he stalked off.

"I _told_ Ro I wasn't cut out for this," Mr. Summers muttered under his breath, then more loudly, "I think I just made it worse." But beside him, Piotr only shrugged.

"He's not ready to hear."

Mr. Summers turned his head to look up at Pete. "That sounds a lot like something someone else I knew once would have said." Then he turned more fully. "Look, I understand you don't think you can do college, Pete, but have you ever considered majoring in psychology?"

Piotr blinked, then blushed, and Kitty felt a little guilty for sitting close enough to them that she could listen in. It had been one thing with Bobby, but Piotr was . . . well, Piotr. Now, he looked away towards one of the screening hedges. "I'm not smart enough for college."

"Bullshit," Mr. Summers said, and Kitty wasn't sure she'd really just heard him _say_ that. Piotr had glanced back, too, but seemed more amused than shocked. "You're a lot smarter than you think you are," Mr. Summers continued, "as long as it doesn't involve numbers." He smiled to take any of the sting out of the words, and Piotr grinned back.

"I'll think about it," Piotr said. "But I still want to take a year off, just to work - save a little money, train in the DR, get my feet under me . . . decide what I want to do."

Mr. Summers was nodding. "There's nothing wrong with that. I did the same thing. Drove all the way to Alaska by myself." And he waded away to call for the next game of volleyball.

Piotr seemed to remember then that Kitty was sitting on the pool edge and glanced over at her. "You ever get the feeling Mr. Summers isn't quite what he seems?" he asked.

She pursed her lips again. "I don't know. You see more of him than I do - in the DR and all."

Hands on hips, Pete shook his head. "Sometimes he's like two people, or maybe three. There's Mr. Summers, then there's Cyclops - but I think there's someone else lurking under all that, too. I just haven't figured out yet who it is."

Kitty eyed him. "He's right, you know. You really ought to think about going into psychology."

Piotr snorted in reply, then said, "Come play volleyball. You can be on my team."

Kitty hopped off the pool edge into the water. Who cared about sunbathing?

* * *

Logan was aware that someone had entered the gym behind him, too far away to identify by scent, but he deliberately refrained from turning to look, finishing his kata instead. There was a peace in this flow of movement; it grounded him, reminded him that he was human, not animal, regardless of the bone claws in his hands - now metal. She'd taught him to be human again after the horrors he'd seen, and she'd introduced him to _Bushido_ - the way of the warrior. _Seigi, yûgi, shin, sonkei, makoto, meiyo, and chûgi_ - justice, courage, kindness, respect, honesty, honor, and loyalty. Those made a man. When he'd lost her, he'd lost them, too, returning to an animal for almost seventy years until another young girl, lost and alone in the snow, had reawakened what he'd once known. On a September day, he'd chosen _seigi_ again - the just act - and begun walking back to himself, even if he couldn't really recall the path. His _heart_ had remembered.

So he finished his kata before turning to see who watched. Summers. He'd been politely waiting while Logan finished, and now crossed to join him on the mat. He wore regular gray sweats, the little X branded above his left breast. "Did you find anything in Japan?"

Logan might have dodged the question as he had with Ororo the day before, but if he owed anyone at the mansion (besides Xavier) an explanation, it was this man. "You might say that." But he didn't speak immediately, and Summers didn't rush him, instead walking over to the leg machine to adjust the weights before sitting down to do lifts. Logan followed, seating himself on the butterfly machine beside it. They were the only ones in the gym at this hour. Logan was here because he was still on Japanese time; Summers was here because the kid was a night owl. For a few minutes, the only sound was the whoosh of steel torsion pulling and giving, and Summers' heavy breath, then Logan began to speak.

"I lived in Japan between the world wars. British and French Canadians were at each other's throats over the matter of allegiance to Britain, among other things, and I had no interest in going home to that fight after having just survived a war. I wound up in Japan."

Summers had quit his leg lifts to listen with a kind of dim amazement. "My grandfather fought in World War II," he said. "You fought in World War_ I_?"

Logan just shrugged. "I fought in the second Boer War - that's the first one I remember. The British were demanding volunteers from Canada - imperial obligations - so I signed up."

"Logan," Scott said, "That makes you over a hundred."

"About a-hundred-and-twenty-two, a-hundred-and-twenty-three - I don't remember what year I was born exactly. 1880-something."

"Son of a bitch." But the words were full of astonishment.

"I fought in South Africa, then in the Great War. I was at Vimy Ridge, and at Flanders Fields later - I took three bullets in the shoulder and chest, and held my best friend in my arms after he took more. Our Second Division lost over 2000 men, but I was in the 31st Battalion and we held the center. Only twenty guys from my corps walked away, and just me without a scratch." That came out bitter. "They discharged me - said I had shell shock. I showed up to check in at the boat, then jumped the deck rail and caught another boat headed in the opposite direction. I wanted to get as far away from home as I could - which is how I ended up on the other side of the world.

"It was . . . different. Completely different, and Japan was in the middle of industrialization by 1918. The army'd taught me a thing or two about engines, and the Yashida _Zaibatsu_ hired me almost off the boat. I guess I fell in love with the country. It was exotic, sure - but it was _regal_, had history in a way Alberta didn't. For a while, I became almost a member of the Yashida clan, but that changed in '31. The family was a little _cool_ towards Westerners after that - even me."

Cool enough to break off negotiations for an engagement and marry the girl elsewhere.

"From the time the Kwangtung Army invaded Manchuria in '28, I kinda worried we were headed for another big international conflict, but most people didn't see that yet. The Japanese didn't expect European interference. They have a traditional claim on Manchuria, think it's theirs by right - and I ain't sure I disagree with that - but their approach was so imperialistic, it worried the rest of the Pacific Rim. Japan didn't care, though - figured they could win any war. They always had before, and didn't think Britain and her allies could stop 'em, especially without North America. After the Great War, the U.S. and Canada took up a policy of isolationism, even if Roosevelt was slipping aid to Churchill long before Pearl Harbor. But earlier, Hoover had refused economic sanctions against Japan, and Canada followed suit. Neither was a major player in the Asian arena anyway. But after what happened in Hong Kong in '31, I knew I had to get out of there pretty soon. I just wasn't ready to leave yet."

Summers was watching Logan with interest, and finally asked, "Why are you telling me this?" But the question was curious more than antagonistic, and Logan understood why the boy might wonder. They weren't exactly friends to invite such confidences. But, "You helped me remember. And - " He looked down at his hands. "I owe you an apology, kid. Maybe this is my way of making it."

Scott was silent a minute, but then said only, "Okay."

Logan took that for expressed interest, though he was starting to feel more like a history teacher than a guy relating his past. He moved on to the personal. "There was this girl, Mariko - just a little thing when I first got there. She grew up. By the time she was seventeen, I'd been promoted pretty high in the company, and was living at the Yashida house. She liked me." Logan couldn't resist a grin, but it turned to a frown. "She knocked me on my ass, Scott. She was less than half my age, but she knocked me on my ass. Back then in Japan, that kind of age difference wasn't considered a problem. So I asked to marry her. Her father laughed at me. Then I told him who I really was, and he changed his tune."

A hesitation, like an indrawn breath. "Who are you?"

"Was, Summers - was. Sir James Howlett, heir to about 20,000 acres of cattle ranch in southeastern Alberta."

And that elicited a funny response. "Man, _why_ is it that half the people around me turn out to be fucking _rich_? Xavier, Warren, Jean kinda - now you, too!"

"I ain't rich - not anymore. Don't wanna be, either. James Howlett died at Flanders Fields along with the rest of his corps. _Logan_ hopped ship for Japan. But nobody from the _daimyo_ - minor nobility - was about to hand over his daughter to some nobody from the backwoods of Canada. If the nobody turned out to have connections to British nobility, though, that was different. So we were formally betrothed and set to marry when she turned twenty. The Yamashita massacre in Hong Kong in '31 changed that. The British hadn't prevented it, and didn't pursue the guilty hard enough, to Japanese eyes. Then the League of Nations condemned the Manchurian War, and Westerners with British ties were becoming less welcome. Yashida-_san_ - Mariko's father - served in parliament as a moderate, and was friends with the Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi - not the military clique. But even so, he felt too much pressure to let our marriage go through, so he called it off and married her elsewhere."

"That's why you didn't want to leave after '31?"

"I asked her to run away with me, and I ain't sure if it offended or amused her more. Mariko was a proud woman. She was married in '32, about the time the Great Depression hit there, and just before the assassination of the prime minister. The kid she married came home from Manchuria long enough to do his duty, then was shipped right back. He was dead a year later, and I was still living in the Yashida household, but by that point, war looked inevitable. I'm not sure how many people really saw then how big it'd get, but it was obvious Britain and their allies weren't going to sit tight while Japan took over China and Southeast Asia.

"When Mariko's husband died, she wasn't pregnant - he hadn't been home long enough - so she went back to her family. Her father could've married her off to another of the _daimyo_ families, but she was a widow now, and if the Yashida were _daimyo_, they were _ryoshu_ - third tier. He wasn't going to be able to marry her up again. And she was special, Scott - unique, brilliant . . . like this amazing firefly. All light and brightness. She was the apple of her dad's eye.

"Yashida-_san_ always liked me, Japanese superiority be damned - I wasn't Chinese, or Korean, or from anywhere around there. And after his buddy Tsuyoshi was assassinated, he wasn't sure if he might not come under attack, too. So he decided to get her out of Japan and offered her to me a second time, on the condition that I take her back to Alberta, and see to it that she got a Western education. I agreed. I'd've done anything for her, Summers. I thought she'd be ecstatic."

He stopped again and frowned down at his hands. "She wasn't. The idea of leaving Japan when her country was on the brink of war struck her as a betrayal." Glancing up again, he tried to find the boy's eyes behind those damn glasses. "You remind me of her. Duty, responsibility, loyalty, discipline. You'd've liked each other - and ain't that a heck of a note? Honor meant everything to Mariko, and as much as she loved me, she loved her honor more.

"So she wasn't about to leave the country or her family right then. She didn't even want to marry me anymore. I wasn't Japanese. She loved me still, but I wasn't Japanese, and she didn't feel duty would let her marry a foreigner. Yashida-_san_ insisted - probably the only case in Japanese history of a father making his daughter marry the man she loved over her own objections of duty.

"They planned something quiet since she was remarrying and I was Canadian, but when her mother went upstairs the morning of the wedding to get her ready, she found her dead by _seppuku_." Even now, tears of shame burned and he blinked rapidly before glancing up - but could see Summers didn't have a clue what the word meant. "She gutted herself with a sword," he explained. "And no one was there to deliver the killing blow, so she bled to death." In agony, but he didn't add that. Summers had been as good as married to a doctor; he'd know what a fatal gut wound meant. "_Seppuku_ was the traditional suicide when a samurai or nobleman believed themselves dishonored. Loving me was her 'dishonor.'"

And now Summers got it, and sat back a little. He seemed to be struggling to find something to say, ended with, "I'm sorry, Logan. Really."

Logan just nodded, then stood. "That was back in '35, but I remember what losing her felt like, how damn _bad_ it hurt. She made me a man again after the Great War, made me believe I could be a man. After she died, I went back to being an animal - Stryker was right about that much. But I remember what it felt like - to lose her - and I'm sorry for what I said last October, kid."

Summers cocked his head, as if he weren't sure he remembered.

"About her choosing you," Logan clarified. "There wasn't ever any choice. You and Mariko - you're the same, just like Jean and me were the same. Jean wasn't ever after me, not really; she just saw part of herself in me, and she was worried and upset and confused. But she loved you. If I get anything about her, I get that now. You were her Mariko. She needed you, not me. There wasn't any choice."

Summers appeared to be embarrassed, glancing around the room rather than looking at Logan. "You meant well."

"Yeah, but that don't mean I spoke well."

Turning, Logan headed out of the gym, but when he was only halfway to the door, Summers called from behind, "You still going to teach me judo?"

Stopping, Logan looked around, then grinned just a little. "Be here tomorrow night, same time. Wear your _gi_, and bring a blindfold. I'll teach you how to fight _back_ the next time somebody yanks that damn visor off your face."

* * *

"All right, let's go through protocol for a soft-field landing, normal approach," Cyclops said.

They sat in Classroom Two off the back hall, between Scott Summer's office and the garage, which was where they conducted the informational part of her flight classes. Now, Rogue nodded and closed her eyes, reciting from memory: "I do a pre-landing check, then clear before taking any turns, check wind direction and correct, do GUMPS three times, check power settings and my flaps, check ailerons for direction and rudder for alignment, make any corrections as smoothly as I can, come in at about 1.3 Vso, then touch down with power, and taxi."

She opened her eyes to see Mr. Summers - Cyclops - grinning. "Good - but when you're actually _in_ the air, you might want to keep your eyes _open_."

Rogue had to laugh, and felt herself blushing. "I will. It just . . . helps me remember stuff at this stage."

"I'm _teasing_, Rogue. I do that sometimes."

She laughed again. "I know." And she did know. But before she could say more, a knock came on the door (which was actually open) and in strolled Mr. Worthington. He shot her an easy smile - "Hi, Rogue" - but his attention returned to Cyclops, who seemed surprised to see him.

"Didn't you just leave this morning?" Cyclops asked, but with humor, not irritation. "I can't get rid of you, can I?" Mr. Worthington casually flipped him off, which made Rogue cough in amused surprise, as it seemed like such a Logan thing to do, not the reaction of the CEO for a multibillion-dollar international corporation. But then, he wasn't reacting to just anyone, either.

She was well aware of the speculation among the older kids regarding Scott Summers and Warren Worthington, but wasn't sure what she thought about it. Bobby insisted they were simply old friends, but Jubilee had told Rogue (in late night confidences) that Mr. Worthington hadn't visited the mansion this much since forever. Rogue had asked Jubes if she really thought they might be, y'know, _a couple_, and Jubilee had replied, "God, I hope so."

Confounded, Rogue had protested, "But Scott loved Dr. Grey!"

"Sure, but she's dead."

Rogue had blinked. "She's barely been dead half a year. And isn't he _straight_?"

"Maybe he's heteroflexible." Then Jubilee had grown uncharacteristically serious. "Mr. Worthington was really close to them both. They were like this . . . triumvirate. You had to see them all together; they'd finish each other's sentences." She'd eyed Rogue. "Don't judge."

"I'm not judging," Rogue had replied, still thrown and trying to wrap her mind around the idea. She didn't want to judge, but couldn't say she was indifferent, either.

In fact, opinion among the older students was divided. (And the younger students didn't seem to have noticed.) Bobby insisted the two were just close friends like he and John had been, Jubilee assumed it was more, and Cecilia apparently didn't care one way or the other. Piotr had refused to discuss it, but Rogue had noticed he hadn't vociferously denied the possibility, like Bobby. Dani Elk River had said it was none of their business, and Sam Guthrie had told them to quit spreading nasty rumors, while Rusty Collins had sided with Bobby. "The guys can't deal with it," Jubilee had said, wrinkling her nose in disgust. "Well, except for Piotr. He knows, but he's kinda conservative on that score, and doesn't want to say anything negative."

Now, Rogue watched the two men closely as Mr. Worthington approached the front of the class where she and Cyclops were seated in desks facing each other. He sat down in a third seat, and there was nothing in their body language to suggest they were more than buddies. Yet there _was_ something there, some glee. Cyclops hadn't expected to see Mr. Worthington again so soon - but was glad to, and not in the same way Rogue was glad to see her roommates. Their bodies didn't say they were lovers, but their expressions did. And Rogue wasn't sure what to make of that.

Cyclops turned to her. "We'll meet again on Friday to go over the rest of the protocols, but I'll see you for DR practice tomorrow morning."

And that was a dismissal. Rogue picked up her notebook and eyed both a moment more, but they were clearly waiting on her to leave. She gave a half-hearted smile and headed out, not shutting the door behind her, just to see what happened. A few moments later, she heard it close firmly.

* * *

"I have news," Warren said, returning to sit down again in the desk.

"I kinda assumed that, or you wouldn't be back so soon." The tone was light and Scott had slouched in his desk seat, but a tight jaw belied his apparent ease. "I assume you're not staying since the wings aren't out."

"Can't. I have a dinner party at seven. But remember you asked me to look into Sebastian Shaw, back at Christmas?"

Scott sat up in the desk. "Yeah. I assumed you hadn't found anything since you never reported back."

"It takes time," Warren snapped, feathers ruffled even if the wings were locked down.

"That wasn't a complaint, just an observation."

"Sorry. It's just been frustrating." He blew out. "Shaw's about as well-walled off as I am, and unless I want him to know I'm digging, I have to move slowly. I've been keeping track not just of his social moves, but his business moves, and Emma Frost's as well. Nothing raised a red flag until about three weeks ago, when Emma suddenly bought stock in a certain pharmaceuticals company, the same one in which Sebastian Shaw already owned significant shares. That wouldn't be especially significant, since pharmaceuticals are big business these days, except that none of the Frost investments have ever been medical, and this is a new and relatively small company, so I don't think she's just diversifying. I did a routine investigation into the company, and guess who's the chief researcher on their development team?"

Scott shrugged. "Haven't got a clue."

"Nathaniel Essex."

Scott sat up straighter as Warren continued, "I did some background checking on him, too. He comes from money, minor nobility, and went to school at Cambridge, then got a post-doc at Glasgow, but his position wasn't renewed. He came over here and worked at Emory, where he was let go after just a year and a half. He lasted barely three years at Tulane. No scandals, but no one wanted to work with him. Seeing a pattern here? Hank called him brilliant but bizarre, and apparently, he is. He's got something like over a hundred articles in print and he's only in his early 40s, but he can't seem to hold down a permanent position in academia. He's been doing research for the last seven years for this private pharmaceuticals company here in New York, where he's now head researcher - and he's probably held _that_ position only because his family owns half of it."

"What's the company called?"

"Grail Corp. I started doing some cross-checking and guess who else has bought into Grail in the last, oh, four or five months? Harry Leland, Donald Pierce, Roberto DeCosta, and Selene Gallio, just to a name a few - all Lords Cardinal of the Hellfire Club."

"The weird guys with the chess-piece names."

"Exactly. But they haven't bought into the company all at once. It's been staggered. And Scott, several things about this worry me. First, Essex was awfully damn interested in Jean at that party, and we know from what he said - and from what he's published - that he works on _mutant_ genetics. Second, Shaw ostensibly opposes mutant rights and supports registration, but if he and Emma are indeed in cahoots - and I'm starting to think they are - what are they up to? I might have believed Shaw's association with Emma a fluke, or gold digging for his son Shinobi, who's closer to her age - marriageable. But it's no fluke if we start involving Essex, and Roberto DeCosta, too; he was another student here, wasn't he?"

"Yes. He graduated two years ago, the same as Emma. If they're all involved in pharmaceuticals, though, what are they up to?"

"Some drug that turns off mutant powers?"

Scott shook his head. "I don't think that could be done. Once the X-gene is activated, it causes very individual changes in our DNA - there's no way to create one drug that would turn it off in everyone. Something would have to be developed for every individual mutation."

"What about something that turned off the X-gene itself, before it manifested? Or something that turned it _on_, if it hadn't been triggered?"

Scott tipped his head to ponder that. "Maybe - I can't answer. I know some of what Jean was doing, and how the gene works, but I don't really understand it. Hank could tell us, though. And if you send him a list of what drugs the company currently sells, he could tell us what they're currently involved in, in case that provides a clue."

"I'll call him when I get back to the office and fax it all to him by tomorrow morning. But there's more." Scott's eyebrows went up, inviting Warren to continue. "There was a recent 'accident'" - Warren put air quotes around that - "at one of the Hellfire Club's inner-circle meetings. It seems the White King died of a heart attack. There's always been a bit of speculation about what goes on at those things. It's more than business, that's for sure. Still, any police commissioner who values his job will see to it that the case is closed pretty damn fast, and if there was a chemical cause for that heart failure, it won't make it into the final report."

"As in _cocaine_ chemical?"

"Or similar. But why this is more than just another scandal is that the club lost their White Queen, too, about a year ago."

"I remember you said Emma Frost had applied for it, but -"

"She was elected."

"Didn't you think she had no chance?"

"That's right. She shouldn't have been elected - but she was. Now the old White King has been deposed, so I asked my dad a few things. Half the court has turned over in the past eight years, starting when Shaw took the position of Black King. That's some turnover since people are elected for life. At first, the changes were slow, but they've been speeding up in the past, oh, three years or so. According to Dad, there's growing concern about Shaw among the club's members; they fear he's turning it into his private empire. Donald Pierce will go forward with Shaw's support; that's almost a guarantee. But Dad thinks there's enough opposition that a different candidate from a family of sufficient stature could beat him."

Warren paused, putting off for a moment the news Scott wouldn't like, but Scott knew him too well. "You're going to run for it, aren't you?" Scott's voice was hard. "You _ass_."

"I may not get elected, but it's worth a shot. I've never been an active member of the club, but my family has produced members for four generations. More to the point, my candidacy will mean interviews with the Lords Cardinal, and plenty of garden parties - I'll get a chance to talk to these people without anyone wondering why I have such a sudden interest in them."

Scott shook his head. "They'll still fucking wonder. People know you're a mutant, War. In that crowd, it's an open secret. If they're really up to something involving mutants and you suddenly start nosing around, don't you think they'll be suspicious? You're walking into the lion's den!"

"I'm a lion, too." He eyed his friend. "I didn't get to be CEO by playing nice. I try to be ethical, and honorable, but I'm a tough shit when I need to be, and I'm good at it."

Scott made placating gestures. "I don't doubt your ability -"

"Yes, you do." Warren hadn't meant to turn this into a fight, but it looked headed that way. On one level, Scott had never taken him seriously because he wasn't the same kind of leader that Scott was. And in truth, Warren had doubted his own abilities until his twenty-fifth year when he'd stepped into a management role at his grandfather's request, and pulled the company out of some serious financial messes that his father had created. Ken Worthington didn't have the business acumen of Warren's grandfather. But Warren had it. That wasn't the kind of leadership Scott evinced. It was _management_, and good instincts about the market, and that was different. "The Warren you know isn't W. K. Worthington of the boardroom."

"I know that!"

"Do you?"

"Yes, dammit. I just . . . don't like risking my friends when it's not necessary."

"And you think I do?" Warren practically shouted, leaning over the desktop to grip the edge with white knuckles. "Did you ever ask yourself how I feel knowing you're running around out there in black leather playing superhero? You're not invincible. And you have no idea what's necessary with this crowd. This is my world, Scott, and this is something I can do. What the _hell_ gives you the right to tell me I can't because it's dangerous?

Scott looked away. "I can't lose you both."

Warren sat back. He was still angry, could still feel the flush under his skin, and Scott was still mad, too, but for once, had his temper under control. "I know. But let me ask you this - if I required you to choose between our friendship and leading the X-Men, what would you say?"

Scott watched Warren out of the corner of his eye from behind the glasses. "You wouldn't ask."

And Warren grinned in spite of himself. "That's right - because if I did, I'd lose you for sure, even if you agreed, because you'd lose _yourself_. Now put the shoe on the other foot, and quit being over-protective. I worry when you're out there, too, but I trust your instincts. Show me the same courtesy, would you? Or don't you respect me enough?"

And, oh, that was the critical point, wasn't it? Warren had no doubt that Scott loved him, but he wasn't sure Scott _respected_ him, and he needed that more.

And put that way, Scott faced Warren full on, expression utterly serious. "There's almost no one I respect more than you." Then one corner of his mouth tipped up. "I'm just a control freak. If I'm not in control, I worry."

Warren took that for a backhanded apology and dropped it. "The Inner Circle does know - or could find out - that I'm a mutant, but I didn't _create_ the opening to coincide with whatever they're up to, and there are perfectly legitimate reasons for me to make this bid. As I said, other members of the Club are getting upset with Shaw, and my father is a major voice in that opposition. I'll put it about that he's pushing me to run. That's not even untrue. When I asked about the whole matter and hinted at running, he practically leapt at the idea."

"Couldn't he run himself? Scott asked, apparently still unwilling to give up entirely.

"He could. But to be blunt, I'm younger and prettier. And people would assume that electing me would mean electing my father in the bargain, except I'm not likely to die or retire in the next ten years."

"Fine," Scott said, frowning at the desktop and picking with a nail at a bit of sticky something. "I won't stop you. But I want to hear everything, you understand? And I want you bugged when you go to meetings. We have the technology for that here - subdural transmitters."

Warren was amused. "Scott, they're not likely to murder me and dump the body. This move may be dangerous to my company, my career, and my mutant anonymity - but not to my life."

"Didn't you just imply they _killed_ the previous White King?"

"Quite possibly. But in fact, that makes it _less_ likely they'll kill me. There's only so much damage control they can effect - especially if it bumps up against equally powerful people who are interested in exposure. Put simply, Shaw won't have me killed because it's too chancy - too likely to end in his own exposure. If he feels I'm a real threat, he'll do something to humiliate me publicly."

"You're not worried about that?"

"I'm very worried about it - but I think the risk is worth the potential gain, and I'm not sure Shaw will go that far. First, his main candidate, Donald Pierce, is already in the court. He doesn't _need_ to bring him in. Second, one can sometimes gain by sacrifice. In short, he may let me win the bid for White King to placate his opposition - believing I don't have much room to maneuver. But he doesn't know what my game actually _is_. The main downfall of men like Shaw is that they tend to assume everyone else's goals are the same as theirs - can't conceive of the fact they're not. Thus, they're easy to predict."

Warren smiled at Scott. "It's all about understanding the opposition."

* * *

"Agent Trask! Over here!"

Larry turned, picking his way over the scattered debris of an improvised "home" inside a building that had been abandoned and formally condemned. Like most such structures in New York, it had immediately acquired squatters; and in this part of town, those squatters were mutants.

And they were dead.

Larry held a handkerchief over his nose to block the smell of flesh decomposing in the humidity of summer; the building was poorly ventilated. The police officer who'd called him was pointing to yet another pair of bodies curled up together on an old blanket. One, a young girl, had growths - were those _bone_? - protruding from unexpected places, and she was absolutely hideous. Her death could only be a blessing for her. Who'd want to live looking like that?

Next to her lay an older youth, a teenager probably, though his hairless skull and lack of nose and ears, not to mention the pea-green skin, made it hard to guess his actual age. The two seemed to have been dead about the same length of time as the other bodies they'd found - a week or more. They were bloated and full of maggots, but not decomposed to the point that identification was impossible.

"God," he said, unable to completely control his gagging reflex even after this long with the Bureau. He'd seen horrible murders and accidents, but there was nothing quite like a human body at this stage of decay, and he did _not_ understand how M.E.s could stomach their job most of the time.

Stepping back, he spoke to the room at large, which contained two other agents and several of New York's finest. "We need to get these bodies bagged before disease really sets in." The cops glared, as they knew damn well that the bagging of the bodies wouldn't be done by the agents. "There aren't any signs of struggle, or indication of a group suicide. I think we're going to have to wait on an M.E.'s report to tell us what they died of before we can get any further on whether to classify the deaths as homicide or something else. It looks like some cluster-fuck case of ODs to me. God alone knows what these people do for fun." A few others snorted in agreement and Larry moved out of the room, through the hall, and back into the sweet air of the street, however polluted. It was nothing compared to the stink in that building.

"Jesus," he muttered as his partner emerged a second or two later. "I don't know whether to pity them more, or think they're better off dead."

Weisman hawked and spat on the pavement to get the smell out of his throat. "Whichever of those you choose, we still have one fucking big mess on our hands. There are at least 14 dead bodies in there, Trask. I don't think it's suicide or homicide, but I also don't think it's a drug OD. Those people looked _sick_."

"How could you tell? The bodies were too far gone, and most of them barely looked human in the first place."

Weisman eyed him hard, and it made Trask squirm. That he didn't like mutants was no secret, but if his colleagues weren't pro-mutant, most of them weren't as suspicious of them as Larry was. "I think we're dealing with some kind of disease," Weisman said. "And if there are 14 people dead of it, what _is_ it? Something old like cholera, or something new? And could it be contagious?"

Larry looked down at his hands and the handkerchief, and was glad he hadn't actually touched any of them, even with gloves. "Let's go find a bathroom and wash up, then head down to file a prelim report. By that time, the M.E. may know something, but I bet they're going to be screaming for the public health department before all this is over." As they passed a garbage bin, Larry stuffed the handkerchief inside.

* * *

**Notes:** Many thanks to Liz Lin and her boyfriend for information (and pictures!) of Japanese graveyards in Nagoya. Mariko, of course, comes from the comics, though I've adjusted her background into something a bit less dramatic even while trying to preserve some of the essential elements. Additional thanks go out to Kathy and Stefanie for assistance with details about Japanese culture and history, pre-war. Any errors are my own.


	19. Personal Journal: Moving On

_**From Scott Summers' Personal Journal:**_

Most change comes in slow increments, not sudden overhauls. You wake up one morning to realize your heart doesn't hurt so badly - doesn't hurt at all, in fact. The hurt always comes back, but it's muted, like a voice under wool, and the truly painful grief hits me only occasionally these days - a song, a scent, some unexpected reminder, then it hurts like hell. But most of the time, no. I get up, shower, get coffee, go about my day, and I'm okay. Even her birthday passed more easily than I expected, and I can smile now when I talk about her.

So here at the end of June, I shop around for sparklers and outdoor party goods for the Fourth and realize that Jean wouldn't recognize a lot of the kids who'll be eating hamburgers. We have ten new students, one of them the boy Shiro, who Logan brought back from Japan, and three of our graduates will be heading out to college come fall - Bobby Drake, Rogue, and Cecilia Reyes. Jean would be so proud of Cecilia, her protegé. Of all the kids who weren't at Alkali, I think Jean's death hit Ceci hardest. She's already gone home for the summer and won't be back here. She has no interest in being an X-Man. But before she left, she came by my suite to bring me a box of old notes Jean had written to her, corrections on papers, a couple pictures, and a few other odds and ends. She'd thought I might like to have them, but I thanked her and gave the box back, telling her to keep it to remember Jean, and to do good in school for Jean's sake. She hugged me and kissed my cheek, and I haven't seen her since.

The rest are still around, though Bobby and Rogue will leave in August for different colleges in the New England area. Jubilee has elected to go locally, and Piotr is taking the year off, as he told me, to figure out what he wants to do. He got a summer job working on a highway crew. He says he doesn't mind because it's brainless and gives him time to think.

I find myself wondering what St. John is up to these days.

With only five who graduated but ten new students, enrollments have risen again, and Xavier called me into his office a week after graduation to make some proposals for the coming fall. Specifically, he was reviewing applications for two new teaching positions to fill growing needs.

It wasn't just the vacancy caused by the loss of Jean, as she hadn't taught much - only biology and health, and Edna McCoy has taken those classes. Edna is still around, even with our part-time school nurse, and I'm glad she stayed. Kurt isn't able to teach, at least not high school, but he has a special bond with the younger students and keeps them busy, and he's offering German on the side to the older ones.

The idea of Logan in a formal classroom makes me laugh.

Instead, Logan oversees grounds upkeep. We had someone who'd done that for the past twenty years, but after the mansion was invaded and shot up, he gave his two weeks notice and found a job elsewhere. Probably the sensible thing, but it means we've been making do ever since out of the student duty roster. When Logan returned, he just stepped into the position without either asking or being asked. It suits him. In his spare time, he offers self-defense classes. I'm not his only student in a _gi_.

Logan has changed. He seems at once older and sadder and more grounded, but also distant. I try to imagine what it must be like to look thirty-five when you're over a hundred and twenty. I like this new Logan, though. All our edging for precedence seems to have melted away in the six months he was gone, and when I look at him now, I think, 'He's older than the professor,' but mostly, I just remember his story, and I can't hate or even resent him any more.

How would it feel to wake up on your wedding day to learn your bride had gutted herself in desperation to avoid marrying you?

Jesus H. Christ.

Anyway - the new teachers. Charles thinks it's time to expand our faculty, and I'm inclined to agree. Actually, I thought we should have done this _last_ year, but what took me by surprise is that one of the applications comes from a math teacher.

_I'm_ the math teacher. Except I don't have a degree in it, and it's not my real love. My degree is in philosophy, and my real love is journalism - and how I wound up teaching math is a long story that boils down to "because it was necessary and there was no one else to do it." A lot of my life has revolved around necessity, not preference. Yet the professor didn't want me to feel displaced, so he brought me in to explain his reason for seeking a new math teacher in the first place.

He's making me headmaster.

Talk about getting an unexpected promotion.

Well, it's not entirely unexpected, just not immediately anticipated. Xavier's going on partial retirement, even if I know damn well he'll never be able to retire completely. Nonetheless, he's past seventy and this has been a long time coming. His reason for this change is so he can take up Jean's mantel as political lobbyist. He's always worked behind the scenes - a known name to insiders - but now he plans to move into the spotlight. Hank can't do it, Warren is afraid, and God knows, I'm no politician. So I'm taking over at the school and he'll spend more time in Washington.

It's just odd to think about. It also means I need to get busy and actually _finish_ that education M.A. at NYU that I've been trailing my feet over. It also means I'll finally get to teach in my field - ethics and philosophy, plus a shop class on the side. Who says I have to be narrow? Besides, I've always included _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_ on the reading list for shop.

_And what is good, Phædrus,  
And what is not good...  
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?_

They don't realize they're getting Plato, not a how-to book on bikes. By the time they figure it out, they've decided Plato is cool.

And as I consider the coming year, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little excited. I never expected to say that again after Jean died. I never expected to be _excited_ about anything. But I am.

The professor will still be teaching; he just won't be teaching as much, or handling the bulk of the paperwork. I've been getting a lot of that anyway over the last several years, but this will be an official shift, and we're hiring a new math teacher so I can do what I'm best at - run things. I suspect Jean would have been proud. Certainly, I'm going to need some management advice from Warren.

It bugs me that he thought I didn't respect him.

In any case, the (potential) new math teacher is due tomorrow afternoon for an interview, and the new English teacher is coming all the way from England the week after, but Xavier's met them both before and I trust his judgment. If he thinks they're good choices, my interviews with them will probably be rubber stamps. Still, it'll be _my_ signature on their hiring contract.

Thus, tomorrow, I meet Doug Ramsey, mutant, computer expert, and apparent linguistic and mathematical genius, and then Elizabeth Braddock arrives, mutant, graduate of Queen's College with a specialization in Nineteenth Century British Lit, and - according to the professor - a martial arts champion with an impressive collection of medals. I think the X-Men just got bigger by one, assuming it works out and she's interested.

After a death, you always hear "Time heals," and "Life goes on." But in the immediate aftermath, it doesn't feel that way. Life doesn't go on - it _stops_, dammit.

Then, somewhere in the months that follow, it starts again. I can't put my finger on the exact moment. I'm not sure there _is_ an exact moment, but eight months later, I feel ready to face the world, more or less. I'll never "get over" Jean. But I'm learning how to live without her.

* * *

**Note:** In the comic, Scott's degree was in journalism, but following the history for him that I created in _Special_, his degree wound up being in philosophy because Yale doesn't actually _offer_ a degree in journalism. It does, however, have a plethora of student-run publications, and Scott spent his last two years writing for _The Yale Herald. _See _Special_, "Consonance," for his history at Yale.


	20. Phoenix

"Ms. Pryor? Mr. LaRue and Mr. Mayfield will see you now."

A bit uncertainly, Madelyne entered the posh conference room at the Anchorage Sheraton that was functioning as a preliminary job interview site for potential pilots. An interview with her _old_ company, which was how her name had come up. Her surprise had been profound when she'd arrived home two days ago from yet another frustrating visit to yet another airline company with no openings, only to have her mother inform her that Summers Air Cargo had left a message requesting an interview. "But they don't exist anymore," she'd replied.

"Apparently, someone bought them out. They're looking to set up shop again, and need pilots."

So here she was, feeling nervous in this nice, clean, and very bare conference room instead of the paper-littered mess that had always been Ted Konner's office. The two men awaiting her couldn't have been more different. One was a neatly dressed corporate Suit with a leather briefcase and good shoes. The other . . . well, he was wearing jeans and flannel and a red baseball cap, and she struggled not to laugh. She liked him instantly. He held out a big, beefy hand that was calloused from hard work. "I'm Mark LaRue. My aunt and her husband started this company back in 1949. They sold it in '79 to retire. Now, me and my cousin are taking it back. We need some pilots, and understand you flew for the company for about six years before the Blackout."

She shook the hand, then released it. "Yes, that's right." Should she say anything about the fact it was her downed plane and medical bills that had helped tip the company into bankruptcy? But surely they already knew that.

As if reading her mind instead of her reading his, LaRue said, "I been told what all happened earlier this year, and ain't blaming you. It wasn't pilot error, and this is a new slate. You're here today 'cause you had one of the best flight records in the company." He glanced at the Suit, who was writing something on a yellow pad as if he weren't really part of this interview, just sitting in. She couldn't figure out the connection.

"Thank you." She blushed a little. "I certainly didn't intend to cause problems for the company."

"'Course not," LaRue said as if that were assumed, then added, "Besides, you're air force. So was I and a couple of my brothers, and so was Phil Summers who started this company. We got a little bias towards vets."

Grinning at that, she gestured to the other man. "Is Mr. Mayfield your cousin?"

That seemed to surprise LaRue, who snorted even as Mayfield glanced up. "I'm the personal assistant of Warren Worthington the Third - of Worthington Steel," Mayfield said, as if she ought to recognize the name, which might be why it felt strangely familiar, except she _didn't_ recognize the name for it to _be_ familiar.

Puzzled, she frowned. "Warren Worthington is the cousin?"

Mayfield rolled his eyes at that, as if impatient. "Hardly." And Lynn, curious at the barely submerged hostility, reached out to ruffle through the man's thoughts, picking up that he was frustrated to be here, believing it a waste of his time on the personal whim of his employer's boy-toy. And now he was stuck for at least another two-and-a-half hours with this backwoods native hick who didn't know the first thing about running a business or proper interview etiquette.

"Mr. Worthington is just helping us set things up," LaRue clarified. "But that's another reason we're tracking down a few trustworthy old employees who can fill in some blanks for us, help us get the business back on its feet."

She started to say she was the wrong person to ask, because she was still filling in blanks herself, but didn't. She needed the job, so instead, she said, "What are the terms of the contract you're offering?"

And they got down to business. At the end of the hour, she left with her signature on five forms, and a new-old job.

* * *

"You think this is nuts?" Scott asked as they waited on uncomfortable couches in the reception area of Alaska First Community Bank & Trust. Warren's personal assistant, Aaron Mayfield, was back at the hotel, overseeing interviews, while one of his lawyers and a financial advisor had come along to the bank with them. It was the minimum staff Warren would take to a buy-out negotiation, although he wasn't the one doing the buying, today.

"Would I have told you about it in the first place if I did?" Warren paused, then asked, "Getting cold feet?"

Scott ruffled fingers through the hair at the back of his head; it was his classic, 'I'm nervous' gesture. "No. Yes. I mean, I have a weird feeling about this trip. I've been wanting to make this buy-out for years, but it's pure sentiment. There's no good _reason_ to do it, and I could wind up losing a hell of a lot of money that's not really mine."

Warren shook his head. "First, sentiment can be a perfectly good reason to do something, as long as you realize that's what it is. And second, the money _is_ yours. Xavier named you heir, your signature is on the trust fund - and he okayed this little venture. You aren't 'borrowing' his money, Scott. It's _yours_ in the same way Worthington money is mine. You're not apt to squander it, so I don't think Xavier's worried."

"It could still be a hellish financial sinkhole -"

"- which is why I'm here. If it looks like a bad idea, we'll tell you, okay? So far, it hasn't. In business-speak, it's a pretty low-risk venture. "

Scott grinned. "You know I appreciate you taking time off to fly up here with me."

Warren made a dismissive gesture. There was no way he wouldn't have come. It was too important to Scott, and Scott wasn't a businessman. He needed Warren, and this wouldn't take more than a few days. Warren could spare them to be sure Scott got his family business back.

Scott's grandparents had sold Summers Air Cargo some twenty-six years ago and it had gone through two different owners since, though the company name had never changed as it was one of the oldest air-freight businesses still operative in Anchorage. Reputation and seniority had helped it survive pressure from larger, corporate-owned freight companies such as Arctic Air.

Yet in the wake of the Blackout, the company had run in the red for months until finally filing for bankruptcy. Warren - who'd had it flagged in his own financial reports - had called Westchester to tell Scott the company was open for purchase, and Xavier had practically booted Scott onto Warren's plane to go recover his grandparents' business. This purchase was important to Scott as a link to the people and past he'd mostly lost, and Warren considered that just as significant as any investment potential - which the company certainly didn't have. This was a _personal_ acquisition, not a business venture, even though Warren would do his best to ensure it didn't turn into the Money Pit, either. He knew all about setting up companies under the umbrella of his family's industries, and making them run in the black. He and his advisors would assess the debts accrued versus the company's assets and potential earnings, and figure out what had to be done so it didn't collapse on itself again immediately.

Now, Scott asked, "You really don't think I'm making a mistake, trying to buy it back? It's not like I'll make any money from it."

"No, you won't - but that's not the point. As long as you don't lose significant money long-term, that's success for this venture. This isn't an _investment_ for you, Scott, so quit feeling guilty that it's not. Let it be what it is. You want to keep your family company in your hands, and there's nothing wrong with that. There's a solid market niche in Alaska for these small cargo and charter companies, and this one did pretty well for itself, up until the Blackout, so as long as you don't get too big for your britches, you'll be fine. An important rule in business is to _maintain reasonable expectations_. It's like gambling. People lose because they trust _luck_, not probabilities and percentage yields."

"I'm glad one of us has the business degree," Scott replied, pulling a little pack of breath strips from his pocket to pop one in his mouth. It made Warren smile. His hair was neat, his face shaved, his teeth clean, his suit pressed, but he was still worrying about something.

"You're anal, Gamma-Gaze," Warren said fondly, then changed the subject. "Tell me about the job interviews - the two new teachers. Anything to write home about?"

"Doug Ramsey intimidates the bloody hell out of me - talk about completely overqualified for a position - and so does Betsy Braddock, but for completely different reasons."

"And those would be?"

"She's gorgeous."

"Ah." And Warren . . . wasn't sure how he felt about that. For personal reasons, Scott didn't usually make observations on the attractiveness of people, but Warren was well aware that he noticed. Warren just wasn't sure whether Scott admitting to noticing meant he might choose to do something about it eventually - and what that would mean for them.

Scott was as straight as uncooked spaghetti and that wasn't likely to change, which Warren had known going into their "relationship," or whatever it was they had. He'd tried to tell himself it didn't matter since he didn't have a crush on Scott anymore, and had never had trouble separating sex from love anyway. He got the latter from Scott (and once, from Jean), and the former he got wherever he found it. But Scott didn't handle things the same way - couldn't - and Warren doubted he could go to bed with someone he didn't love. Or rather, he _could_ and _had_ every night for fourteen months and some odd days, but it had messed him up so badly, he'd spent the last fourteen _years_ crawling out of that hole. Warren had wondered what he was going to do now, with Jean gone. He couldn't have sex at random, and wasn't going to have sex with Warren, but Warren also doubted Scott could be a monk for the rest of his life. Eventually, something would give and he'd wind up doing something he couldn't reconcile, or he'd find a new lover to allow inside his shell because he still needed the physical, whether or not he liked to admit it. And then where would Warren be? Jealous as hell, he knew. Jean had been one thing; he'd loved her as much as he loved Scott and there had always been room for Jean because Jean had been part of the equation almost from the beginning. But any other woman? No way in hell. Betsy Braddock meant nothing to Warren and wasn't likely to, and she'd better keep her mitts off Scott Summers. "The question," Warren asked after a moment, "is whether she was intimidated by _you_? You're not exactly unattractive yourself."

Scott glanced over at him. "She flirted with anything sporting a dick - except the professor - from the minute she walked in the door." It was intentionally crude. "I wasn't particularly singled out, no. It's just her modus operandi. She's going to tie the boys in knots, but maybe it'll get them to read Shakespeare, I don't know. She's certainly qualified for the job."

"What do you think of her personally?"

Warren had tried to keep his question level, but Scott knew him entirely too well, and both his eyebrows went up. "Don't worry about it. There's zero chance of anything." Annoyed, Warren's lips thinned, but he didn't push the matter and now it was Scott's turn to change the subject. "So what's the current status with the White King campaign?"

"There." Warren was saved from saying more about it as the bank loan officer entered the reception area, and he struggled to his feet from the badly designed couch. These places bought furniture intended to make one feel like an idiot climbing out of it, he was sure. "Come on, let's go get your company. After a quarter of a century, it's time Summers Air Cargo was back in the hands of a Summers."

Rising with a little more grace (he didn't have the damn wing rack), Scott replied with a grin, "My, what a Worthington thing to say."

"Don't bite the hand that balances your books, buddy."

Scott just kicked at the edge of Warren's foot with his own.

* * *

Lynn arrived at the company offices off the airfield very late Monday afternoon. Parking and grabbing her purse, she headed in to meet with the new owners, who wanted to talk to all the returning employees. "Get a sense of how things were run, at least," Mark LaRue had told her on the phone. Apparently, he was to be the new business manager, and whatever down-home charm he projected - and whatever the Suit named Mayfield had thought - she was starting to gather that he was sharper than he pretended.

He met her at the door. "Come on in, come on in." The outer offices looked quite different, decorated in local native motifs and far sparer, with less furniture and less junk - but that might be just a function of a company reboot before things started to pile up. There was a secretary or receptionist at work at the outer desk, but she didn't offer more than a brief wave before returning to a stack of papers.

"You're Alaskan Native?" Lynn asked, studying a carved wooden mask on the wall. She'd gathered before that he might be, but wasn't entirely sure.

"Half," LaRue replied as he ushered her through into a meeting room with a long table, standard-issue corporate chairs in blue, and a handsome blond man seated with a laptop in front of him. Another man in dark jeans and a hooded sweatshirt looked out the window towards the airfield, his back to them. "But yeah," LaRue was saying, "we're Tlingit. Come meet my cousin. Scott, this is Madelyne Pryor. Lynn, this is my cousin, Scott Summers."

The man at the window turned.

And the world froze.

She couldn't move, couldn't think - all her skin was on fire and her knees felt weak. "Scott . . . ." she whispered.

He frowned, as if he almost recognized her, but then just moved forward to offer a hand. "Yeah, I'm Scott Summers. Nice to meet you, Ms. Pryor."

"Scott," she said again, unable to take the hand just as she felt unable to _breathe_. That wished-for recognition-of-the-familiar that she hadn't felt with her family crashed in on her now.

THIS was the man she'd come back for. THIS was the one she'd defied death for.

_"Scott."_

The rest of them were staring - Mark LaRue and the blond man at the computer . . . .

"Warren -"

She raised a hand and everything STOPPED - LaRue himself, the shuffle of papers from the secretary in the outer office . . . everything but the three of them. Scott and Warren stared at her, confused - then at the frozen LaRue, then back at her. "Who are you?" Warren asked at the same time Scott said, almost disbelieving, "_Jean?_"

**JEAN.**

She wasn't Madelyne. She was JEAN.

Closing her eyes she . . . rippled. It felt like a shrug all over her skin.

"Jean," both men said then in unison.

"Jean," she replied, then fell to her knees. "Oh, my God. Oh, my God."

She'd barely hit the floor before they were both there, Warren having leapt the table corner to reach her. "Jean!" Scott yelled as Warren said, "Are you okay?" Then he slapped his forehead. "Jesus! You're not okay!" They hauled her back to her feet and got her set down in a chair; she felt completely unsteady, and Scott's face was white, while Warren had two flushed spots high on his cheeks.

"I'm okay," she said, looking up at their anxious faces, then - a little to her surprise - broke up laughing. "I'm okay!" And she was pulling them down to hug both at once, an arm around each of their necks. "I'm okay. I'm _back_." Almost unconsciously, she reached out to their minds, rifling through their memories of her - and yes, she KNEW this life. She KNEW these memories. Her spirit knew, and she _swallowed_ them.

She was Jean again. She was _Jean Grey._

"What the hell happened?" Scott began when she let him go. "How did you - " But before he could even finish the question, she _pushed_ it at them, everything that had happened to her since leaving Alkali Lake. It was easier than explaining verbally.

Both men grabbed their heads as if in agony. "Shit!" Scott screamed, and Warren had collapsed on the floor, writhing.

She released them instantly, dropping out of the chair to kneel beside Warren, stroking his hair as he panted, recovering. "I'm so sorry!" She looked up at Scott, who was rubbing his temples and frowning behind the glasses. "I'll go slower," she said.

"Thank you," Scott said as Warren sat up.

Jean glanced around, remembering Mark LaRue - still standing there frozen, mouth half-open as if to speak - and then she looked down at herself, her real self. Her own body, not Madelyne Pryor's. "This is going to get a little . . . complicated."

"Understatement of the week," Warren said, pushing himself to his feet and pulling her up, too.

"We need to talk," Scott told them, also glancing at LaRue. "Can you play along for now?" he asked Jean.

"I can do better." And she passed her hand in front of Mark LaRue's face. He began to move again, but just sat down at the table and began jotting notes on a pad of paper, as if none of them were in the room. "He thinks I've already come and gone, and the two of you got called away for a little bit. Come on." Turning, she led them out of the room. "Let's go to what used to be the copy room. We can talk there." The secretary noticed them no more than LaRue had as they paraded past her desk and headed for the copy room down the other hallway.

* * *

Reeling, Warren followed Scott, who followed Jean. _Jean. _Alive.

He couldn't begin to name everything he was feeling - besides shock.

She took them to a small room full of copy paper and a big copier, and shut the door. For a moment, they just stared at each other, then moved with that synchronicity they'd always shared to converge in a three-way embrace, arms tangling, heads knocking, but it didn't matter. It lasted a moment until Scott broke away. Jean reached out to him, hand poised to cup his cheek, but he yanked back. His jaw was working as he struggled to contain something volatile. "Why the hell did you do it?" he snapped.

"Do what?"

"You didn't have to get off that damn plane!"

They locked gazes and Warren felt suddenly like a voyeur, but when he tried to step away, Jean's hand shot out to grip his wrist, stopping him. "I don't remember," she said to Scott. "There's so much I don't remember. I know things - I recognize them. But I can't _remember_."

She reached out telepathically to them both again, but far gentler this time. Warren opened to her but Scott resisted, chin gone up. Finally though, he relaxed, and she gave them the story of her rebirth in a jumble of images - her bodiless disconnection in the lake but the need to _know_ that had driven her from the water, then discovering that downed plane, her recognition of Scott's name and the coincidence of a woman pilot who resembled her enough to confuse, the familiarity of Anchorage, her attempt to BE someone she wasn't . . . all innocent. And last - meeting them.

Then her touch was gone. "What a fucking mess," Scott muttered, rubbing his forehead. Warren could only nod, but the inadvertent comedy of errors wasn't foremost in his mind.

What _was_ she now? What had she become? Unbidden, he recalled Xavier's own description of her in those final moments on the plane**:** _The power that she exhibited in those last moments was . . . staggering, quite honestly. I've always known that Jean harbored far more potential than she'd even begun to tap, but I would never have predicted anything like what I saw and experienced at Alkali Lake._

She was watching him and he knew, absolutely knew, that she was reading his mind as easily as a child looked through a window. "What are you?" he asked her.

"I don't know," she replied - it sounded small, and scared. She hugged herself, frowning down at the floor. "God, I don't know. I don't know."

Scott moved forward to embrace her, answering the fear in her voice, but Warren felt caught, like a bug in a spider's web. He was _scared_ of her. "I won't hurt you," she said - pleaded, really - looking from him to Scott. "I love you both. I'd never hurt you."

"Of course not," Scott said, but more as a reassurance than as if he fully believed it. She wouldn't mean to hurt them, certainly, but a creature who _could build herself a new body_ was more like a god than a human being, and what might she do to them just by accident?

Was this how normal humans felt about mutants?

"I _won't_," she insisted now. "I won't." She held out a hand to Warren. "Come here."

He came, and it was Jean's gentle hand on his upper arm, his cheek, and running through his hair. She drew him closer, into her hug with Scott. "I won't hurt you. I just . . . _help_," she said, her voice small.

And that finally sounded like Jean. She'd always been a little afraid, tentative, unsure of herself, and they'd been her bulwark. "We're here," Warren said now, his reserve melting.

This time, their embrace felt honest, not desperate or overwhelmed. "We'll figure it out," Scott said, chin resting on the top of Jean's head. Jean began to cry in relief, sagging against them. They held her up. She was a thousand times more powerful than they, but they held her up.

* * *

Jean felt hollowed out. She sat in a chair in the reception area, a cup of water in one hand and a box of tissues on the table beside her. In the past hour and a half, she'd been through every powerful emotion she had, and now felt hollow and clean. Clear-headed.

Scott and Warren had gone back to tell Scott's cousin they were calling it a night. At a little before seven in the evening, the secretary had long gone, yet the sun still rode high in the sky. It was mid-summer in Alaska and hours of daylight remained, though she felt utterly drained.

They needed to get out of this office and figure out what to do next. There was so much to fix. She knew now who she'd been and what she'd been able to do.

And how she'd died.

Yet she knew it only from Scott's mind, and Warren's. She still had no personal memory of her final moments, not really - just an impression of desperation, like the faint dimple of feet in the sand after a wave has come and gone.

She'd died to save them.

Except why had she _died_?

That was the question in Scott's mind. And Warren's, too, though Warren felt it to be less pressing. But she'd _lifted the plane and split the wave_. Later, she'd rebuilt a body from the remains of another, and swam through minds like a fish. She hadn't needed to die. She understood that now. Why hadn't she understood it then?

The sound of footsteps made her look up as Warren came through the door, alone. "Hi," she said.

"Hi," he said back.

"How are you?"

"Shocked. How are _you_?"

She smiled. "Shocked. Relieved." She paused, adding, "I've known, I think, that I wasn't who I thought I was, but didn't know who I might otherwise have been. Silly, isn't it? I leapt to a lot of conclusions, but it never really occurred to me that I had. It just . . . seemed logical at the time."

He sat down in the chair next to her and took her hands. She gripped back and tried to give him a smile. "How aware were you, when you were reborn?" he asked.

"Not very. I knew I had to come back. I was . . . needed. Or something. Maybe I just couldn't let go." She paused, thinking it over. "It's different, not having a body. It's like - you know in the morning, when you're not quite awake, but you're not asleep? It's like that. I remembered, but didn't. I was aware, but not. And now, I don't quite remember what that felt like, yet I do." She shook her head and pulled her hands from his, ran them into her hair. "And that's a completely inadequate explanation, but it's the best I can do."

"I get it, I think. Well, as much as I can."

Letting go of her hair, she gripped his hands again; he was her life raft. He always had been. Maybe she'd come back for Scott, but that was because he'd needed her. _She_ needed Warren. "How is he? I can _feel_ that he's angry. He's hiding it but he's still angry."

Now, Warren shifted, uncomfortable. "Jean - I . . . ."

"Just tell me."

"He believes you killed yourself."

"What?"

"He believes you suicided on purpose. To get away from him."

She was flabbergasted. "_Why on earth would I do that? _Warren - I _couldn't die_ because of him! I couldn't die!" She yanked her hands free again and sat back, dropping into the memories she'd pulled from Scott. Memories were a little like picking up puzzle pieces, or stacks of paper. She could skim them quickly, but a deep reading took time to integrate. Now, shuffling through, she could pick out what Warren was talking about, and it stunned her. Warren hadn't exaggerated. Scott honestly believed she'd killed herself, and the why both boggled and angered her.

There had been Scott. And there had been Logan. And Scott believed she'd chosen not to choose, because she'd wanted Logan - not him.

How _stupid_.

Yet while she knew it was wrong, she didn't know what was right, precisely. And that frustrated her even more. "I didn't want to get away from him," she told Warren now. "I love him." She studied Warren's face, to see if he believed her. He just nodded. "I don't know why I did it," she went on. "But I know why I didn't. It wasn't to get away from him, the idiotic ass. I came _back_ for him. But then - why did I do it? Do you know?"

He shook his head. "Not really, just have a few ideas."

"Which are?"

Glancing towards the door, his hands still gripped in hers, he said, "I don't think you realized you _could_ save yourself. Well really, that's Charles' theory, but I'm inclined to agree. You were thinking about saving them, not saving you."

She pondered that; it felt neither wrong nor right, as Scott's theory had felt decidedly _wrong_. "That may be part of it," she said, "I don't know for sure. All I can say is that it's not false."

"You really don't remember?"

"I really don't. I . . . recognize - sometimes." She paused, then explained, "Some things I just seem to know - like how to speak English; some things I recognize; but some . . . no, I don't remember. I don't quite understand how it works, maybe because I'm not sure what survived. I mean, me, obviously - my spirit or whatever you'd call it. But what _is_ that? You can't quantify it scientifically. All I can tell you is what I know of the physiology of memory. The brain stores things - all those wrinkles - but brain _damage_ erases them. It's gone." She made a sweeping motion with her hand. "And the notion that we remember _every_thing that happens to us? False. New knowledge eventually pushes out the old unless we're actively using it. So hypnosis can be as much _invention_ as recall. It may help us get at things we've blocked, but it's tricky because if we can't remember, we make it up.

"So whatever I knew as Jean Grey, those memories are gone, obliterated along with my old body. And yet . . . I do _know_ things. I remember some, I recognize others, like I've got this . . . imprint, or something - as if I were developing a picture. But even that - how much of this is mine? I have memories from others - you, Scott . . . I recognize them, or at least I feel that I do. But what IS mine? I don't know anymore."

She rubbed right between her brows. "It's a little like watching a movie, seeing yourself from the outside but never the inside. I have feelings - not memories."

While she'd talked, he'd rubbed a thumb over the back of her hand. Now, he said, "It's a start. Maybe the rest will come back -"

"No," she interrupted. "That's what I'm trying to tell you, War. There's nothing _to_ come back. My old brain is _dead_. Gone. Kaput. How can I remember if there's nothing from which to _get_ the memory?"

"But you know things - recognize them. You just said so. And all this about brain function? You're not getting that out of _my_ head. Or Scott's. That's what _Dr. Grey_ knows about memory."

And she blinked in surprise because it was true. She'd just lectured him on neurophysiology without even thinking about it. "I know it like I know English. Or how to drive a car, use a computer - fly a plane."

"Exactly," he said. "You pull it up on instinct. You knew us the minute you saw us. Maybe you needed a little help to get some of it back, but give it time. The Jean who survived still has some kind of memory, and it's imprinting the new brain you've got now - or however that works."

She was nodding. "Maybe so." And maybe she'd needed practical Warren to help her look past what she thought she knew about memory - what she knew for _living_ people. Who'd ever had a chance to assess memory in someone eight months dead and back from the grave in a different body? Her case was completely, totally unique.

Another shuffle of footsteps made them both look up to find Scott standing in the doorway, looking exhausted and a bit ruffled around the edges. He was watching them, his expression . . . hungry. And angry still. And plain bewildered.

She was worried about him.

Letting go of Warren she stood to cross the floor and hug him, because he needed it. "Come on," she said. "Let's get out of here."

He was pulling away even before she released him, and she reached up to stroke his cheek. He allowed that, at least, then led them out to his and Warren's rental. Lynn's car was still in the parking lot, too, and Jean said, "I can't leave it here." But should she follow them straight to their hotel, or drop by her (Lynn's) house to tell her (Lynn's) mother where she'd be, and pack some clothes and toiletries? (And how fast had she shifted to think of it as _Madelyne's_ house and family, not hers?) They elected to follow her back to the house, and she suspected that Scott (and Warren) didn't want to let her out of their sight. So they drove over there and, in the car, she shifted back to the form she'd worn for the past several weeks while she tried to decide how to explain the strange men with her, and why she'd be spending the night with them.

As it turned out - much to her relief - she didn't have to. Lynn's mother was out playing bridge, and Jean packed up some clothes in a bag, then left a note, saying she was staying with friends for the night and would be back sometime tomorrow - not to worry.

But she worried herself. What would she say to the woman who thought she was her daughter? "I'm sorry, I'm not Madelyne. She died in a plane crash last October, just like you thought." It was hard enough to lose a child, but to lose that child, regain her, then lose her again?

Jean wouldn't think about that just now.

By the time she was finished packing, it was coming up on nine in the evening and none of them had eaten. Warren and Scott had followed her into the house when it was clear there was no one else there. Now, she fed them sandwiches before they headed downtown to the Sheraton. Even that made her feel guilty, to be eating Lynn's mother's food, much less sharing it with strangers. This wasn't _her_ family.

As they eeled through the Anchorage streets back towards the Sheraton, she sat in the back seat and stared out a window. The sun had crept low on the horizon at last, the light of it firing the edges of things like a halo, and glaring in her eyes.

* * *

Jean - looking like Jean again - seemed subdued when they reached the hotel and headed for the elevator to the Neo-Classical suite, the same one, ironically, that they'd stayed in all those years before when Warren, Jean, and Xavier had first accompanied Scott to Anchorage.

Which reminded Warren. "We need to call the professor." They'd all been so preoccupied - and plain shocked - no one had yet thought to do so.

Jean and Scott both glanced over. "We will," Scott said. "But let's sort out a few things first." They stopped in front of the elevator doors and Scott hit the call button. A car arrived almost immediately and they boarded, yet the near-cling they'd felt back at the air cargo offices had vanished, and now, none of them seemed to know what to say or how to react. Scott stared at the elevator buttons, Jean stood against the car rear, arms folded over her chest, staring at the wine carpet, and Warren leaned against the far wall, watching them both. The silence was heavy, and when the doors parted, they moved down the hall in the same awkward silence, Scott letting them into the suite.

Immediately, Warren threw off his jacket to start unhooking the rack, and it was Jean who came to help, her fingers expert at the fastenings, remembering, or recognizing, or whatever. But she got it off of him as easily as she could have done eight months before, while Scott headed straight for the in-suite wet bar to make himself a drink - a sharp reversal, as alcohol was usually _Warren's_ answer to stress, while Scott reached for tobacco. Of course, he'd had plenty of that in the car already, and his blood had to be half nicotine right now.

Jean was carefully unfolding Warren's wings, smoothing her palms over the long bones while he shivered them open until they reached from one wall to the other in a white, feathered screen.. "So soft," she whispered. "I'd forgotten . . . ."

Downing half a Jack and Coke, Scott said, "Okay - what next?" No one answered immediately, and Scott pointed out, "Jean can't stay someone she's not."

"I know," Jean said, ducking under a wing to go collapse on the crushed-velvet suite couch and grab a pillow, hugging it to her middle like a child with a stuffed animal. Silence reigned again, with only the faint clink of ice from Scott's drink, and the hum of the air conditioner. "I'll just make them forget," she said finally. "After all, I created the whole history - everything I needed to be Madelyne. It was easier than trying to explain the truth."

"Except it wasn't the truth," Scott pointed out, harshly.

"I didn't _know_ that! I thought I _was_ her!"

"Well, maybe if you hadn't jumped to conclusions in the first place, we wouldn't have this problem now."

"Stop!" Warren shouted, suddenly furious. "Just fucking stop it, both of you!" He glared at Scott, who glared back, then slammed down the (now empty) glass to stomp for the suite door.

"Scott -!" Jean called, leaping to her feet.

He paused, hand on the knob. "I just need to take a walk by myself," he said. "I need to think. I'll be back." And he didn't sound angry, just weary. Warren and Jean watched him go.

"I should go after him," Jean said.

"Give him a few minutes," Warren told her, but she was right. Leaving Scott alone too long, whatever he thought he needed, wouldn't be wise. Nonetheless - "You can't just make them forget, Jean."

She glanced from the shut door to him. "Why not?"

"It's . . . too big. There's too much to change, now. And it's not right, to mess with that many people's memories."

"I can't tell them what really happened!" She sounded both frightened and angry. "I can't say, 'Sorry, I'm not really your daughter, I just thought I was'!"

"I know," he replied. "We need to talk to the professor. He's more used to this kind of thing."

"People coming back from the dead?"

Warren made a frustrated noise. Sometimes she was as deliberately obtuse as Scott. "He's used to figuring out the simplest, cleanest solutions to accidental problems caused by mutations."

She thought about it. "Okay." But it was clear her attention was divided - half of it out the door.

"Go find him," Warren told her.

She headed out, but paused before exiting, just as Scott had. "We'll be back."

"I know. You two need some time."

She removed her hand from the knob and came back to where he still stood, not far inside the entryway. Standing on tiptoe, she kissed his cheek. "I love you," she said. Then she headed out.

And Warren headed for the wet bar himself, grabbing Scott's empty glass. "You love me," he said to the empty room. "But you love him best."

And abruptly, he dropped the glass. It hit the leather bar top, bounced, and rolled onto the floor. He didn't notice. He'd fallen back against the wall, hand raised to his mouth, biting the back of it, weeping. His wings shook.

Jean loved Warren, but she loved Scott best, and always had, even when she'd thought she hadn't. Scott loved Warren, too, but loved Jean best, and always had. And Warren had simply accepted that status quo because they were all _he_ had. Until she'd died, and he'd finally had one of them to himself.

But now she was back, and the two of them were out there together, while he was in here - alone.

* * *

Scott had gotten all the way outside and down several blocks by the time Jean caught up to him on the sidewalk. Finding him had been no problem. His mind burned bright to her psychic sight, familiar, beloved . . . angry. "Scott!"

He halted in front of a modernesque office building done in pink stone with three totem poles out front for decoration. Turning, hands shoved into pockets, his face was frustrated under a drawn up hood. "I said I wanted to be alone."

She came up to him and just stared into his face. "If I left you longer, you'd start to _brood_, and we both know how much good that does you." A pause. "I didn't leave you, you know."

"What?"

"I didn't die to leave you. I didn't. I know it's what you think - but it's wrong."

He just stared back at her from behind the glasses, and frustrated, she reached out to touch his mind, feel what he felt.

She hit a wall - a wall she'd taught him to make, in fact, she and Charles. _Let me in._

"No," he said aloud.

"Why?"

He didn't answer, just continued to glare. With the sun all but down at last - just a little glow yet over the western bay - she could see the soft light of his eyes behind the quartz.

He'd had such beautiful eyes once, so wide and expressive.

And without quite thinking, just reacting on instinct and some innate knowledge of her new ability, she lifted away his glasses with her TK, power surging forward to stop the beams even as he snatched for the ruby quartz. Then his hand froze when no red lashed out. Stunned, his jaw dropped as his glasses drifted down, earpieces folding neatly to fit into her hand.

For the first time in thirteen years, their eyes met with nothing in between.

"They're still blue," she said softly, reaching out to brush a lock of hair off his forehead under the hood. He seemed too stunned to speak. "I thought they might be red now, but when I hold back the beams, the iris is still blue. I always loved your eyes."

"How are you doing this?" he whispered.

"I don't know. I just can. I needed to see you again - and I needed you to see me. I think we lost ourselves a little, these last few years."

He was crying. And he _could_ cry, without the beams in the way. The tears welled and slid down beside his nose, winking in the light of a street lamp. She wiped them away. "I never stopped loving you," she told him. "I loved you so hard, I couldn't die. I don't know where you got that crazy idea that I died to get away from you. I didn't. I _came back_ for you."

And that broke him. He shuddered, and the tears turned to sobs as she embraced him hard, his face - no glasses - pressed to her neck. She held on as tightly as she could. The few people passing on the sidewalk at such a late hour looked politely away. When he pulled away finally, his hands came up to tangle in her hair, pulling her forehead to his. "I _missed_ you," he hissed.

"I know. I'm back."

"Don't ever leave me again."

"I'll do my best to avoid it."

And they drew apart, recovering their public dignity in this public place. She returned the glasses to his face, releasing his power again, but softened, so it didn't pain him when it surged back, as it might have otherwise. It was so easy - so easy to block it, hold it, diffuse it, finesse it. Before, at Alkali Base, it had taken everything in her just to turn it aside. Now, it was child's play.

"What have I become?" she asked him, all her fears returning.

But she didn't feel any fear in him as he cupped her cheek. "You're the fire and I'm the moth," he said. "You're my life - my phoenix."

"_You're_ a sap," she replied, but she was laughing a little.

* * *

**Notes:** First, thanks to Elle for checking Warren's business comments; all errors are mine, not hers. Second, on Scott's family business, a lot of the background for that was established in _Special_, entry 12, "A Capella," but everything necessary to know appears here, and the whole thing is based loosely on the comics, where Scott's grandparents (both still alive there) did, indeed, own a private cargo company in Anchorage called North Star Airways. Deborah Summers' maiden name was never given; LaRue is entirely my invention. For more info on that, see the notes at the end of "A Capella." And just for the record, in the comics, when Jean erupted from the Bay newborn as Phoenix, her words were, "I am fire, and life incarnate! Now and forever - I am Phoenix!"


	21. Personal Journal: Tremors

_**From Scott Summers' Personal Journal:**_

You don't expect your fiancée to _blow_ you in an alley of downtown Anchorage.

Well I don't, anyway. I did that once for money, not love, and it's sure as hell not my kink.

It was, however, my first serious clue that Jean had _changed_ in more ways than just an enormous power jump. Xavier is powerful, too, so much so, it can scare the pants off a person, but I've come to trust him. It's not that he can't or doesn't screw up, but even when he does, there's a line there. He doesn't cross it. Yet after that first evening back together, I wondered if Jean still saw lines. I do believe she wanted to, tried to, but there was something missing, like a person with brain damage relearning how to walk, move, act.

And what an ironic analogy for me, given that "brain damage" has defined both my history and my power. Ironic for Jean, too, as she's occupying a body that was, apparently, missing its _head_.

Jean's spirit - or whatever you'd call it - rebuilt and resuscitated a corpse that was never hers in the first place, even if she can make it look as thoroughly like her as anything Mystique could do. And where, exactly, does spirit end and biology begin? Body chemistry affects our thoughts and behaviors more than we often realize, and I wonder - is she still _Jean_ if there's nothing left of the original, physical woman? "Life" may encompass more than mere electromagnetic charges in our cells, but I don't know if anything actually survives when they stop. Jean _did_, but is that because she's a spirit whose mutation lets her stick around, or is she something else entirely - something that _can't_ die? And if so, is she even human? It's a metaphysical question worthy of my philosophy degree but pursuing that line of thought just raises the hair on the back of my neck. It's _not_ philosophical to me. It's personal.

Whatever she is now, though, I won't abandon her - not when she needs me most. I may never have said the actual words, but "in sickness and in health, until death us do part" applies here. Death didn't, apparently, part us.

Part of me thrills to that. Her words, "I _came back_ for you" - I can't even begin to articulate what they meant, how they pierced me. I needed those five words more than any explanation, any rejection of Logan, any miraculous resurrection. Not only did she not die to get away from me, she _came back_ for me.

I can forgive a hell of a lot for that kind of love.

After our confrontation a few blocks from the hotel, I was feeling such an intense rush of emotion, I wasn't ready to go back yet and share her with anyone, even Warren. She wasn't, either, so we ambled about a while, arm in arm, speaking little. It was all about sheer sensation - to touch again and be touched, grounding her and filling a desperate (and mostly ignored) need in me. I can't ask for physical affection, and I'm often afraid of it - but I _need_ it. Jean's known that almost from the beginning. Even when I held aloof from everyone, resisting touch, she imposed it on me. I once described her as being like a force of nature, and she is. Irresistible. Upbringing gave her refined manners, and age has given her restraint and caution - but in her core, she's none of those things.

And she loves me. It's different from Warren. Warren has always accepted me, cared about me, put me first, supported me when I wasn't worth the mud on his shoes, but Jean makes me believe I can _live_ - be more than I am. Warren protects me. Jean . . . Jean pulls me forward. One behind, one in front. I need them both, but my eyes are turned forward. On her.

It doesn't hurt that I find her sexy as hell.

And that night, I needed. After eight, almost nine months without her, I _needed_. Unfortunately, Warren was back in the suite, and though it had two bedrooms, if we'd returned there and shut ourselves up in one, he'd have known what we were up to, and I just . . . I couldn't do that to him. It was more than privacy of space.

It felt like Greece all over again, when we'd first gotten together, except Warren had seen that coming for months, with time to prepare himself. In fact, he'd all but shoved me at her because I was a dolt. But it had hurt him. And later, he'd gone to Istanbul, rather than back to Greece with us. Time had eased the awkwardness, but all of a sudden, everything was complicated again - though one thing wasn't complicated at all. I wanted to fuck Jean. _Now. _My body ached.

Sensing it in me must have been as easy for her as reading a billboard. After a decade together, she was psychically attuned to me anyway, and it was so much more powerful now. Thus, we strolled down the sidewalk, sides pressed together, sometimes pausing to kiss open-mouthed - an unusual display for me, which, at the time, I chalked up to horniness. In fact, it was Jean. She wasn't putting it in my head, but she was helping to suppress my (normally enormous) inhibitions.

Like a city of any size, downtown Anchorage had the ritzy sections and the less ritzy, and one could cross out of the first into the second in just a few blocks. So we found ourselves in south Anchorage where iron bars blocked doors and windows, and neon signs advertised beer, cigarettes, pool, and tattoos. It wasn't nearly as rough as similar neighborhoods in New York, but it was rough enough. My side of town, once, where people pretended to ignore you while watching your every move.

"Jean, we need to go back. This area is dangerous."

"We don't need to go anywhere," she told me, head on my shoulder, thumb hooked in my back belt loop so that her hand rested on my ass. "They don't see us." And she stopped me, pushing me up against a brick wall to kiss me, distracting me thoroughly (yet again) while pressing a knee into my groin, and I was hard inside my jeans. Her mouth moved from my lips to my jaw and throat and I just stood there, letting her nibble down my neck, my hands kneading her back and shoulders. "Nnngh." So articulate.

A little alley opened between the pawnshop on the right and the pizza parlor on the left. I could smell the hot scent of spices and bread, and my stomach growled; laughing, she maneuvered me backwards into the narrow run, angling me against pizza-parlor brick, her body still pressed all along mine, and now her hand was working the front of my jeans -

Except both her arms were still around my neck while she kissed me. Nonetheless, she was fondling my cock - and that was a telekinetic trick she'd attempted a few times before but had never been any good at, her touch not strong enough (and neither of us were eager to experiment with anything rougher that might cause _pain_ there). Yet now, she demonstrated such uncanny control that I was too worked up to think much about how she was doing it. I did care about the_ people_ passing not ten feet away, even at eleven-thirty at night. Pulling away from her mouth, I said, "Jean, this is a _street_. There are people watching!"

"No, they're not. I told you, nobody can see us. Relax."

And I did. I wouldn't have, normally, but I did, probably because whatever the hell she was doing with her TK had sent me right around the bend. It felt as if two-dozen fingers were working up and down my shaft, hitting every sensitive spot from the tip to the root in a way impossible for a hand (or two) to do. She had me raised up on my toes, thrusting against the invisible force of her TK even as she was trying to get my fly undone.

I really wasn't thinking anymore at that point. Pure lust had taken over, and whatever hang-ups my history would normally have imposed, she'd managed to undercut them - telepathically soothe them. This wasn't about power. She wasn't trying to prove she could drive me crazy or make me want her so badly I didn't fucking care; this wasn't about her, at all, in fact. She was aroused, too, but mostly in response. This was all about me.

Fly open finally, one of her hands worked with her TK to free me from my underwear, push pants and underwear down, and I flat didn't give a fuck who might be watching because she'd dropped to her knees to take me in her mouth and -

- I wasn't wearing a condom. "No!" I pulled away. "You know that's not safe!"

_Relax,_ she sent telepathically. _You can't infect me now._

_How do you know?_

_I know. Stop _worrying_, Scott. Enjoy it. _And she leaned in again, mouth encasing me in a wet, engulfing heat like I'd never experienced with latex between - and it quite thoroughly shut down my brain. She could have used her TK for this, too, and without drool or the threat of teeth, but it would've lacked the same impact. It mattered that for love, someone would do for me - would _want_ to do for me - what I'd been forced to do for money, and it had required _years_ before I'd been able to let her. It wasn't as physically intense as being inside her - the wrong shift of posture could take pressure off just where and when I needed it most - but the _psychological_ impact was so great, it sent me off faster than anything else.

One of her hands had snaked up under my sweatshirt to play with a nipple while the other was rubbing the back of my thigh as her mouth worked me, tongue stroking my shaft, and I rocked into her, gripping her hair to hold her steady, as gentle as I could. Yet when she pulled up to suckle and lick all around the swollen head, I was back up on my toes, teeth gritted, balls drawn tight, ready to explode - but I couldn't. Pressure squeezed the base of my cock, keeping me from climax, and I could feel the sperm pooling, blocked. Her tongue was sawing all around the cock head now, then she tickled the slit with her tongue tip and slid it down to the indentation on the underside, pressing hard and flicking back and forth. The fingers of one hand continued to pinch and roll my nipple while the other stroked my tight balls, and by this point, I was groaning and writhing against the brick wall. She'd never held me off like this and I gripped her head to rock into her mouth roughly, not conscious enough to be gentle, striking the back of her throat, but she was taking it without gagging - was humming instead and the vibrations were the last straw for me. "Dammit, Jean, let me come! Fuck, fuck, fuckity, _fuck_ . . . ." I was just incoherent.

The pressure at the base of my cock disappeared and I arched forward into her, ejaculate rushing out and down her throat, and I still had her head gripped hard in both my hands, but couldn't stop. She swallowed around me and I shouted again in painful ecstasy. It was so amazingly intense, flesh to flesh like this, that I almost fell over. Her TK kept me from doing so.

Then the peak was past, and I was panting, my hands still holding her head, but stroking her cheeks now, her hair. Pushing her back carefully, I slipped out of her mouth and my poison semen spilled down her chin. Whatever she'd said, that worried the hell out of me, and I wanted to get her cleaned up and off her knees. And Jesus, Mary and Joseph - we were still in that alley with people passing beyond the mouth of it, and no one was looking.

I was shaking all over, and not from the sexual release. My past crashed in on me and I felt used, even though this whole encounter had been about my needs. Realizing that, she got to her feet - graceful as always, and my clothes were rearranging themselves under her invisible TK hands, tucking me back inside, zipping up, and all the wetness and mess that should have been - it wasn't there. Atomized, maybe, I don't know. It wasn't on her face anymore, either, and she was just holding me. "It's okay," she said over and over. "No one saw us. It was as private as if we were alone in a room, just you and me. It was just you and me, Scott."

But we hadn't been alone in a room, and even if she could dismiss the setting, I couldn't. Still, she'd been responding to me, giving me what my body had desperately wanted. It just hadn't been what _I'd_ wanted, and once, Jean would've known that, would've ignored my physical desire to answer my heart. It was why I'd fallen in love with her in the first place. She knew and respected my hang-ups, never made fun of me or tried to rush me past them, and so I'd been able to _get_ past them . . . but as _me_ - in a conscious act - not by her momentarily suppressing them, which is what had happened here. Yet it had been done as a gift - the best damn blow job I'd had in . . . ever, really.

To say I was _confused_ wouldn't have begun to cover it.

And she knew. "I'm sorry," she whispered, holding me, head pressed against my chest. "I didn't mean - "

"I know." I stroked her hair, trying to bury my disgust.

But she felt that, too, and drew away, head bowed. "I won't ever do that again."

"You can do it again," I said, "just let's do it in our bedroom next time, okay?"

"They really didn't see us, Scott."

"I know; I believe you. But I saw them. And this - it brings up some bad memories. Plus next time, we should use a condom."

"That's really not necessary." I opened my mouth to protest, but she put a finger over my lips. "Quit worrying. Think a minute." And she held out her arms to indicate her resuscitated body, as if to say, "If I can do this . . . ." She had a point there.

I nodded, and we just stared at each other for a moment. "Thank you," I said finally, and that covered a multitude of things from her regret over the mistake to the simple fact she'd given me mind-blowing sex. Then we headed back to the hotel, fingers intertwined but no longer glued to each other's side.

By the time we got back to the hotel it was after midnight, though I'd stalked out a little before ten. Warren wasn't in the outer room; we found him passed out face down on the bed in the smaller bedroom, TV blaring. We'd had a long couple of days, true, not to mention the emotional drain, but the little night stand collection of those sampler liquor bottles they put in hotel rooms was the chief culprit. I picked one up and showed it to Jean, who sighed. I counted at least six bottles - all downed in two hours. And he was out cold, didn't even wake when Jean shook him.

"Damn," she muttered, looking up at me from across the bed. We didn't need to discuss what had brought on the bender, and I sat down on the bedside, clear of his wings. She came around to kneel beside me, laying her head in my lap while I stroked her hair. "I didn't want to hurt him."

"Life's like that," I replied, sounding more philosophical than I actually felt. "He's glad you're back, Jean."

"I know he is - part of him is . . . really _is_. But part of him -" She looked up at me, then joined me on the bed. "I took you away from him again."

"I never belonged to him -"

"Yes, you did. For a little while, you did."

"It wasn't anything like that." I hesitated, unsure whether she realized we'd been sleeping together recently - even if it was really just _sleeping_. "We didn't have sex."

"But you love him. You, of all people, know better than to equate the two."

I frowned a little and she stroked my hair. "This isn't a competition," I said. "I never wanted it to be a competition."

"It's not, it's just . . . hard to balance. Even before you and I became a couple - it was hard to balance. When I died, things went back to just you and him."

"But we were never a _couple_ - not like you and I."

"Oh, quit it!" She got up and stalked a little away from the bed, then turned on her heel to face me, hands on hips. I was reminded of a younger Jean with her red head's temper. "You weren't having sex, no, but you were together. I felt it."

I glared at her from behind the glasses. "Stop reading my mind without my permission." My anger wasn't just at her invasion of my privacy, but also embarrassment that she might know I'd been prepared to move on.

She frowned back. "It's not a matter of reading your mind, Scott. It's a matter of _not_ reading it."

"What do you mean?" The subject change provided distraction from going into what I'd had with Warren.

"To read minds before, I had to . . . _reach out_. It was like taking a book someone else was reading, then turning it so I could see the words. Sometimes, I had to fight to get the book at all. But right before the end, I had to keep other minds _out_ - like when I was a girl."

She stopped abruptly, hand going up to her mouth in glee. "I_ remembered_ something! All on my own, I remember that!"

I smiled a little at her obvious excitement. In the car on the way to the hotel, Warren had told me about his conversation with Jean back at the office. He'd also said he thought she remembered more than she realized.

Now, she went on, "Anyway, it's not a matter of me trying to read your mind. It's as if you had the book turned towards me already, and I consciously have to _not_ look." She wrinkled her nose in frustration, an expression I'd always found charming. "It's going to take some practice. But just so you know - I'm not trying to sneak a peek, okay?"

"Okay," I said.

"As for what you and Warren had -" I tensed but she barreled on, "It doesn't upset me, so quit worrying about it. There's no one I'd rather have seen you with, and I think, if anything, knowing you'd still have Warren makes it easier."

Jaw tight, I looked away, "It wasn't that I moved on overnight."

"Scott," she seemed amused, "loving Warren wasn't moving on at all, really; he was in the equation already. Plus, it's been almost nine months. I think I'd be more upset with you if you _hadn't_ started to think about what came after."

I eyed her. "You sound awfully reasonable about this." And she did, the same way she'd used to sound when we'd been kids and I'd been difficult to live with. "Don't rationalize."

"I'm not - exactly. I had a little practice with this coming back from the dead thing when I still thought I was Madelyne. She had a fiancé, too. That's part of what contributed to the confusion in my head. There _was_ someone she might have come back for - except he really did move on." She walked back to the bed and I reached out to her, our fingers twining. "But you're still here." She glanced back at Warren, dead to the world behind us. "Come on, let's get him up and into the other bed."

"Why?" I asked, baffled.

But she didn't answer, just released me to walk around to the bed's other side. "I can help lift his weight with the TK. Get his arm, Scott."

I did as she instructed, and we maneuvered him off the bed, supporting him between us, his wings dragging the carpet as we walked him out of the smaller bedroom and through the living room. "Why are we moving him?" I asked again.

"Because we won't all fit in that bed comfortably."

And I got it then. "We're going to sleep together."

"Of course. It wouldn't be the first time." She grew serious then. "I don't want him to wake up alone." We had him to the other bed now, the one Warren and I had been sharing already, and Jean wrestled with his shoes and dress slacks, getting them off while I turned the bedsheets down. Then she was stripping out of her own clothes, digging in her bag for a nightgown and toothbrush. It was all a bit surreal for the very mundanity of it. How often had we shared this routine? And I'd never thought to share it with her again.

We got ready for bed, then fell asleep with Warren bracketed between us. The next morning, Jean woke first and brought him water and aspirin, waking him, and me by default. I threw my pillow over my head. I'm not a morning person.

"How the hell did I get in here?" Warren asked as he took the pills and water. His hair was a sweaty mess.

"We carried you," Jean replied, matter-of-factly.

He stared at her, then turned to look at me. I still had the pillow half over my head. "But didn't you two -"

Jean cut him off. "You're part of this, too, aren't you? The bed is big enough for three, War." She sat down, still facing him. "It's big enough for three."

Warren turned to me again - as if asking permission, but I just stared back. I didn't resent him being here, not this morning of all mornings, and I knew Jean was trying desperately to keep him from feeling excluded. But I also wasn't too sure where she expected him to sleep _tomorrow_ night. After what had happened in the alley, I wouldn't pretend to predict her. "This could get a little unorthodox," Warren said lightly - but I could hear an edge of uncertainty behind it. He was no more sure what she'd meant by that than I was.

But Jean laughed at him. "Worrywart." And reaching out to grab a pillow, she bopped him on the head with it. He grabbed his own pillow to swing back, and it devolved from there until we were all three engaged in a titanic pillow fight like a trio of hyperactive ten-year-olds, and I wasn't sure which feathers came from the pillows and which from Warren's wings.

It also allowed us to avoid talking further, but by that point, we needed the stress relief, and wound up in a giggling lump on the hotel-room floor. "The Three Mutant Musketeers are back!" Jean howled, holding up her pillow like a limp sword. We tickled her until she cried uncle.

Then we called Xavier. It was almost noon out there. "Professor," I said when he answered. "I have someone here who wants to talk to you."

And I handed Jean my cell phone. She held it gently, hesitated, then said, "Hi, Charles -"


	22. Apocalypse

Hank McCoy was met at JFK airport by the commissioner of the Department of Health, who appeared simultaneously harried and alarmed, her eyeliner smudged from what must have been a long day already. She explained what they'd found in the Bronx even as they collected Hank's baggage and headed for her car.

"I'm not sure what we're really looking at here, Dr. McCoy," she concluded as she let Hank into the passenger side. "But fourteen people are dead, with six more possible cases from that same area and a few others from other boroughs. It's hard to know at this point if the cases are really related, but I'd be lying if I didn't say I was damn nervous."

Hank had nodded through most of her explanation, and the commissioner asked now, "You said you wanted to go straight downtown? You don't need a hotel?"

"I have a place to stay in New York. I'd like to get busy reviewing all the information you can give me."

"Then we'll head straight to St. Luke's-Roosevelt," the commissioner said, starting her car. "St. Luke's Division of Infectious Diseases has been handling preliminary research. As soon as the M.E.'s office came back with their autopsies, we sent everything we had over there."

"Excellent," Hank replied. St. Luke's was one of several hospitals near Columbia University, and associated with its medical school, which meant access to that institution's research labs.

After a few hours spent examining reports in the hospital's basement library, Hank decided that the preliminary information was sufficiently worrisome to phone his bosses back at the CDC, warning them that New York might be facing an outbreak of something new, nasty, and quite possibly viral, though it was too early to rule out a meningococcal bacteria. So far, the unknown illness had turned up only in a specific population - mutants - which could be a quirk of transmission, but didn't bode well for the mutant population. Unless the CDC was very careful in its phrasing (and probably even if it _was_ careful), this could be grist for the prejudice mill, just like early reports on AIDS in the U.S.

St. Luke's was utilizing full quarantine measures with the patients who'd been transferred there. A logical decision, though Hank suspected the infecting agent either wasn't very resilient or wasn't fully airborne. Otherwise there would have been a lot _more_ infected people by now. In any case, they needed to find the mode of transmission so they could predict its spread, and contain it, if possible.

"There's one patient who might particularly interest you," the division head told him as they entered the quarantine area dressed in standard protective coveralls, gloves, and masks. Hank was escorted to the furthest room, occupied by a young girl barely of school-age - though Hank wondered if she'd ever been to school. Her skin was pink, her hair a shade of lavender, and her eyes peridot green - bright and unnatural in the same way as Kurt's or Mystique's. She looked up when they entered, but then looked down again, remaining curled in a ball on her bed, arms wrapped around her knees. She paid no attention to the TV or toys that had been brought for her.

"She was found along with the dead mutants, and had the disease, too," the doctor told him, "but she survived the crisis, and now appears to be fully recovered. We can't locate her family."

Hank scowled. "Perhaps because they don't want to be found." Then moving into the room, he sat down on the bed beside the girl. "Hello, my name is Hank."

She didn't reply, didn't even look at him.

"How are you feeling?"

She still didn't reply.

"Do you have a name?"

No reply at first, then finally**:** "Blink."

For a moment, he thought she was making a request, not giving her name, then realized she must be _called_ Blink. "Do you have parents we can contact? Family?"

"My family's all dead." She buried her face in her knees. "Wish I was, too."

Her little body formed such a ball of misery, it hurt to look at her, and he patted her back with one gloved hand. "How old are you, Blink?"

"Dunno. Seven maybe?"

"How long have you lived in Mutieville?" He used its common name.

"Long as I remember. I was born this way. People like you thought I was gross."

Hank's mouth fell open in surprise, then he realized the kid couldn't see him, covered up as he was. "Blink - I was born the way I am, too." And he pulled the glove taut enough for her to see that his hands were outsized. He held one up, and she put her own small palm to it.

"Wow. You, too?"

"Me, too."

She looked past him to the division head standing near the door. "That why they sent you in here? So I'd talk to another mutie?"

"No, I'm here because I work for the CDC - do you know what that is?"

"No."

"The Center for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta. We investigate epidemics, among other things. We don't know yet if that's what this is, but when 14 people die from the same disease, and more fall ill, it looks suspicious."

She stared at him, and he hoped he hadn't scared her, but her next words weren't what he expected. "You mean you're a _doctor_? They let you be a doctor even though you're a mutie?"

He swallowed his surprise. "Yes, I'm a doctor, and a mutant, just like you. I'm here to find out what killed your family, Blink, and to try to stop it from killing anyone else."

Quite to his shock, he found himself with an armful of child, hugging his neck, and all he could do was hug her back. He doubted she'd been held or comforted by anyone since her family had died, and probably felt so desperate and lost, she'd take anything that seemed remotely friendly. "It's okay," he told her now, though it was anything but - yet what else could he say? The poor thing was trembling in terror and relief, and he was sure Charles could find room for her at the mansion. More, his mother was there. She'd know how to deal with a traumatized child. (Hank was convinced his mother would know how to deal with any crisis from a collapsed wedding cake to a nuclear holocaust.)

Hank talked to Blink for a while. He couldn't take her out of quarantine yet - might not be able to for some time until they could determine if she were free of the disease or had become a carrier - but he wanted to find out as much as she knew, even though it was painful for her to talk about her family's deaths.

"Why didn't they go to the East Tremont Medical Center?" he asked her.

"Leech did, but they told him it was a summer flu and he oughta go home, take some aspirin, and get some sleep" - which advice, Hank thought, had probably owed more to an overbusy clinic than the fact this Leech was a mutant. He knew very well that the place treated mutants, as Jean had volunteered down there on a regular basis. "Leech did what they said, but it didn't help none. And by then, everybody in the house was getting it, and they got sick so fast . . . ."

"What were the symptoms?" Hank asked, then realized she might not know that word and added, "When your family got sick, what happened? If the doctors at the clinic thought they had the flu, I assume they had fevers, chills, muscle aches?"

"Yeah, then a sore throat and bad diarrhea - really gross - and finally, they started vomiting or spitting up blood . . . ." She curled up again. "Then they died."

Hank rubbed her back once more, trying to conceal his shaking hands. It sounded like a hemorrhagic fever of some sort, which could prove extremely nasty.

Leaving her, he followed the head of infectious diseases down to the lab to look at test results. "Have you been able to isolate any of the virus in tissue samples?"

"Not yet, but we only started this morning - had to irradiate them first." Even as specialized as St. Luke's was, working with tissue samples was as far as they were prepared to go. Growing cultures of an unknown virus required Biosafety Level 4 containment, and St. Luke's was cleared only for BSL-2 with BSL-3 precautions. "The morgue is wanting to burn those bodies ASAP," the head continued. "We have a number of samples, but . . . ."

Hank could understand both the need to dispose of cadavers containing the contagion as well as the reluctance of researchers to part with sample sources. "Let them cremate everything but the boy called Leech; according to the little girl, he seems to have come down with it first, so he's our index case. We'll have samples prepared for shipping to the CDC to start growing cultures." And here, away from prying ears, he asked the question whose answer he dreaded, "Are we looking at Ebola, or something like it?"

"Possible," the head replied. "But if so, why in such a restricted population? So far, all the dead or infected have been mutants."

"I wondered the same thing. Maybe it's a related filo- or arenaviruse, like Marburg or Lassa?"

"That's what we're investigating, although I'm not ruling out something else. We're still at the threshold, here."

"I'll go get prepped, and we'll get to work."

Hank debated calling his mother to let her know he was in town, but then realized he'd have to explain why, and decided there was no sense in alarming her - or anyone - just yet. They didn't know how bad this was, and probably wouldn't for some days, and he doubted he'd be free to leave for Westchester any time soon, anyway. This was a crisis, and they'd be working round the clock to isolate what they had before too many more people came down with whatever it was. They needed to know if this really struck only mutants, how long people were contagious before showing symptoms, and who the infected had been in contact with. He was glad he'd gotten some sleep on the plane, as he doubted he'd be getting any more for the next 48 hours.

* * *

Sebastian Shaw, Nathaniel Essex, and Emma Frost were all drinking sherry around the big teak desk in Shaw's Wall Street office, a copy of the _Times_ on the desktop in front of them, open to an interior page (12B) with the headline**:** **Multiple bodies found in Bronx building**. An editor at the_ Times_ had obviously gone for prudence over sensationalism, but it was well recognized that the paper focused on the rest of the world more than New York. Shaw toyed with the idea of slipping a few tips to one of the local tabloids, to see what they did with it, but dismissed the notion. The truth would out eventually, and they weren't in a hurry. The longer it took for full recognition to be made, the further the virus would spread.

"So how long will we wait until we offer the vaccine?" Emma asked as she stood, hip cocked, leaning into the side of his desk.

"I'd say some years, actually," Essex said. "Virus research takes time, my dear Miss Frost. They must first ascertain what the disease _is_, and we can hardly offer the vaccine before they've isolated the infecting agent, no? We shall then have to have it approved by the FDA."

"Not to mention," Shaw added, "the more panic we create, the higher the price we can reasonably command."

"Wasn't the idea to ask a fairly low price, so we'd look humanitarian but still make a killing from the mass demand?"

"Precisely - yet 'low' is relative."

She frowned. "The paper says about half the bodies were children and teens." She glanced at Essex, who was watching her with flat, snake eyes. "I thought you said this virus would only target people with primitive X-genes - freaks like that green boy, or the elderly."

With a long-suffering sigh, Essex seated himself on a corner of the desk. "It does target those with primitive X-genes - but they might be old, young, normal-looking, or not. Nevertheless, their genome would eventually be culled by evolution - developmental dead-ends, if you will. This virus is simply helping nature along. By contrast, certain sequences in more advanced and powerful X-genes will allow those mutants to be naturally resilient to the virus." He smiled; it was serene and terrible. "Survival of the fittest."

Shaw found such supremacist talk to be annoying bunk, but if it got Essex to cooperate, he'd put up with it. Frankly, Shaw didn't carewhat kind of virus Essex used. Anything lethal would do, as long as they alone had the vaccine, but Essex had pointed out there was a reason certain deadly viruses didn't yet have vaccines. Those viruses mutated too quickly, making a vaccine bloody hard to create. Engineering a virus gave him more control by permitting him to 'fix' the viral genome so it'd be possible to produce a vaccine. Yet Shaw wondered if that were the real truth, or if Essex just wanted an excuse to play God? He was a sick bastard - if more prudent than Selene Gallio in his consumption of human life. One might even say he provided a service to the city by ridding it of the homeless infestation. Shaw had lost track of the people Essex had killed in pursuit of his virus.

"Aren't you a little worried," Emma asked now, "about whether some people might decide that the lives of mutants aren't worth the cost of the vaccine? I thought that was another reason to keep the price down."

"Oh, I'm sure there will be some - perhaps quite a number - who'd argue the lives of mutants aren't worth the healthcare cost of the vaccine, especially not if it comes from tax dollars." Shaw settled down in his desk chair, finishing off his sherry. "Which is yet another reason why it's prudent to have some of the dead be young. Children draw natural sympathy, even if they're mutants."

She frowned, but then shrugged. "I suppose."

"Now, Emma," Shaw teased, "don't go all moral and Xavier-ish on us, eh?"

That verbal prick drew the response he'd wanted, and she sneered. "I hope that arrogant, self-righteous old fool catches the virus and dies."

Grinning, Shaw said, "I'm glad to see you weren't really growing a conscience."

She lay back across the top of Shaw's desk, back arched just enough to push her little breasts into the air. Shaw appreciated the view, even if Essex rolled his eyes. "A conscience interferes with business, Sebastian. As you've so often told me."

"Just so," he replied.

* * *

It was purest chance that Artie happened over the same article, since he wasn't normally inclined to comb the newspaper.

He'd been to East Tremont twice since Memorial Day, looking for Leech, but hadn't discovered anything about his friend, and since the end of June, had been contemplating breaking his promise in order to request the professor's help - but kept wondering if he were worried for nothing. He might ruin his friendship with Leech, and make the professor mad at him, both.

On a Friday in mid-July, he wandered into the den to plop down in one of the big seats, bowl of Trix in hand (he still had taste buds enough to enjoy the sweet). Bored because none of his friends seemed to be up yet, he grabbed a stack of _Times_ abandoned on an end table and browsed headlines for anything interesting or gory. He found the usual string of murders, rapes, and tales of violence, including a story from the previous Friday titled: **Multiple bodies found in Bronx building**. He read it more from morbid curiosity than any prick of suspicion.

The article was short, and to the point, and less than three minutes later, Artie was out the den door headed for his room to change clothes, his cereal bowl abandoned on the coffee table.

What he thought he could do, he didn't really know, but the article had turned his unformed dread into solid fear. The multiple (mutant) bodies had been found in an old building not far from where Artie usually met Leech in East Tremont, and Artie thought he knew now why Leech hadn't contacted him since mid-May. He cursed silently while the tears made it hard to see to tie his shoes. Grabbing his wallet, cell phone, and PDA, plus a pad of paper, he headed out. He knew he should leave a note saying where he'd gone, but if he did that, someone would notice he was missing. If he didn't, they might all just think he was somewhere else, and he'd be back before anyone missed him.

It was early yet, barely 8:30, and no one questioned him as he headed out the front door, down the steps, across the drive and little access bridge, then strolled down Greymalkin Lane towards the highway, and a bus stop. If he were lucky, he would be in the Bronx before 10:00.

* * *

It began with nightmares.

Yet Larry Trask had suffered from nightmares since junior high, and if those nightmares had sometimes turned out to be true, he chalked that up to a natural ability to note and evaluate facts and details. He just worked them out subconsciously in dreams, and it had eventually led him to follow his father into a career in law enforcement, and the FBI. He had a knack for knowing if something were fishy, and might involve a crime. It was just such a hunch, in fact, that had made him suspect the Blackout that had killed his father had involved more than the State Department was admitting to, and which in turn, had led him to Strife.

He rarely had dreams of _himself_, though, which is what made this particular nightmare different. In it, he saw flashes of himself dressed in a suit, asleep on a bed with satin sheets. That might be odd, but not ominous; however, it evoked such terror in him that he woke, sweaty with panic, twice on a Tuesday night. The third time he had the dream, the flashes lengthened enough for him to see that he wasn't asleep on a _bed_. He was dead in a coffin.

He gave up on sleep finally at five, showered and went to work early. But by the afternoon, he'd developed a fever and bad headache, and decided the dreams had come only from the onset of a flu. He went home early, and by that evening, added body aches, weakness, and coughing to the mix. Thursday morning, he called in sick to work for the first time in two years, and by nightfall, was both retching and suffering from diarrhea. He spent most of the wee hours of Friday in the bathroom, and by sunrise, barely had the energy to call his girlfriend, who arrived to find him unconscious in a pool of bloody excrement and vomit, in the tub. She tried to clean him up, and then called an ambulance.

When the EMTs arrived on the scene, and radioed in, they were told to stay away from the patient (despite the screaming abjurations of the girlfriend) until a team of specialists from the public health department could be dispatched to begin quarantine procedures. An hour later, Larry was admitted to St. Luke's with the same symptoms already seen in sixteen different patients now from the Bronx area and beyond - not counting the original fourteen dead. Larry made victim number seventeen, with one significant difference.

According to his girlfriend, Larry Trask wasn't a mutant.

* * *

"We may have our first non-mutant case," Dan said, entering the lab area to plop down on a stool beside Hank, offering him one of two mugs of coffee. After almost 48 hours nonstop, they'd long since moved past such formalities as Dr. McCoy, CDC specialist, and Dr. Moser, head of Infectious Diseases.

Now, Hank glanced up from the electron microscope. "A non-mutant?"

"According to reports." Dan sipped coffee. "He's never actually been tested for the X-gene, but insists he's not a mutant. More to the point, he was one of the two FBI agents originally involved in finding the bodies - a Lawrence Trask."

"The other -?"

"I already notified the FBI, and they're checking on his partner. Apparently, Trask called in sick yesterday, and was brought in by Public Health this morning. We've got him on fluids and electrolytes, the same as everyone else. Right now, we can count three recoveries, including that little girl, and three additional deaths. I called around this morning and two more probably won't see the sun set. The rest are holding their own for the moment."

Hank rubbed his eyes under his glasses; he was running on caffeine and determination. "We'll still need to check this Trask's DNA for the X-gene. If he really isn't a mutant, then we're going to have to find and quarantine every police officer present at that recovery, plus family . . . " He trailed off. It had been about a week since the bodies had first been discovered, time enough for the virus to have incubated.

"Problem is, he's refused to sign the paperwork for the tests."

"_What? _Can we insist on it -?"

"It's protected under privacy acts, which is probably a good thing, but damn annoying in this situation." Dan Moser was that rare individual who didn't seem to harbor bias against mutants as a matter of course. "I could go to the public health commissioner and see if there's anything she can get from a judge - or if worst comes to worst for him, we'll have the autopsy - but first, I'll head over to quarantine and see if I can talk some sense into this Trask. I want to finish my coffee, though, before I go, so tell me what you've got at this point."

"Well, we've finally isolated a sample of the virus in some tissues, but what I'm seeing here isn't making any sense. Under the microscope, the morphology of the thing looks like a lentivirus." At that, Moser sat back in his seat - it wasn't good news. Lentiviruses, such as AIDS, didn't lend themselves to vaccines. "But we also ran a serology on Blink's samples, and I can't tell from that if I've got a lentivirus or a filovirus. Not to mention the _symptoms_ sure look like Ebola or its mutant cousin. Pun intended. We're going to have to see the results from a PCR or western blot test on an actual viral culture, when those come back from the CDC - which means waiting until they can grow the cultures. That's a week, Dan."

"Then go get some sleep. I think we're stymied for the moment. We may as well rest while we're waiting; we need clear heads."

"There are two patients who need answers today, or their families will."

"They'll live or die regardless of what we find out, and you know it. We need to give the _right_ answers when we give them." Getting up from his stool, Dan sighed. "We can't know for sure how to contain this thing until we know what we've got, and that depends on what those tests from Atlanta tell us. Public Health is already taking this seriously, and the reporters are starting to circle like vultures. I don't want to feed the hysteria." He tossed a couple of local New York tabloids on the table. On the front of one, a small-point headline at the page top read: **Mystery bug fells muties in Bronx**, and on the second, a larger-point was splashed across the center: **Cops: Mass mutie killing a ritual slay**. "They can't decide if they'd rather go with a disease or something more exotic and cultish."

Lips thin, Hank shook his head and tossed the papers aside, though he knew Dan was right about getting correct answers. Yet working with viruses meant that answers trickled in slowly, and it was often less about vaccinating than about treating, containing, and preventing their spread. The fact that this virus required a week or so of incubation before symptoms manifested, and had shown up in a heavily populated city, did not bode well. At this point, Hank bitterly hoped it _was_ restricted to the mutant population, because if not, they were looking at a serious hemorrhagic fever epidemic in the biggest city in the United States, as well as the one with the second-highest visitor count. An uncontained epidemic here could have disastrous results, as bad as the 1918 Spanish Influenza, or the 1878 Mississippi Yellow Fever.

"I'll go talk to this FBI agent," Dan said, "see what I can find out - then I'm going home for a few hours. You go to your hotel, or wherever you're staying, and get some sleep. I've got your cell phone number if I need it." And he headed out.

Hank stayed - stubborn - for another twenty minutes before admitting that Moser was right. He was so tired he was seeing spots that _weren't_ on the slide. Wrapping up for the moment, he found a pay phone (he didn't want to discuss this over a cell, just in case someone picked it up) and called his mother, who was astonished to hear from him. "Why didn't you call me when you got in?" she asked.

He could have said he'd been a little preoccupied, but that wouldn't have flown. "I didn't want to worry you until I knew more."

"Knew more about what, Hank?"

He scratched the back of his head. "I got called up here on official business. Fourteen bodies were found in the South Bronx last Friday afternoon. The Department of Health called the CDC when they verified that it was disease-related. Some additional cases have shown up since, and I've been buried at St. Luke's from Tuesday on. No real headway so far, except that I can say for certain now that it's viral, and either a lenti- or filovirus."

He heard her little intake of breath. "That's serious."

"Very. But here's the real reason they sent me - so far, it seems to strike only mutants, which I'm not sure is good news. If true, it's good for containment, but it could backfire on mutants in terms of public opinion. Though it's possible we may just have gotten our first _non_-mutant case."

"You don't know for sure?" she said.

"He says he's not a mutant, but he's refused a DNA test. Anyway, we're waiting on other test results now, so I'm headed up to the mansion. I need some sleep."

"I'll be sure your room's ready, but Hank - I hate to ask this, since you're exhausted -"

"What?"

"One of our kids is missing, and we think he may have headed into the city."

"Why?"

"No one's sure. It's Artie, do you remember -"

"- the boy with the reptilian digestive system? He's hard to forget. He was haunting the lab while I was there, apparently worked as Jean's student assistant."

"Well, his little girlfriend Terry couldn't find him this morning, and tried calling him, but he wouldn't answer his messager. He's nowhere on the grounds, and she thinks he went into the city to look for some email pen pal of his who was living in Mutieville. He hasn't heard from the boy in some weeks, and -"

"Mutieville?" Hank interrupted, feeling dread in his belly. "The friend was a mutant from East Tremont?"

"Apparently, yes."

"Mom, these bodies - the original ones - they _came_ from East Tremont."

"Oh, no." Her voice was small.

"Where's Charles?"

"He's in Cerebro. He came through the kitchen a little while ago to eat lunch, then headed down there and said he wouldn't be available again until evening. We can't open Cerebro while he's in there -"

"I'll head to the South Bronx, see if I can find Artie. Give me his cell phone number."

She did, and he left a message on Artie's phone as he departed the hospital, luggage in tow. He wasn't sure if the boy would respond, as he hadn't answered his friend at the school, but he'd baited his hook as well as he could**:** "I might be able to tell you something about your friend from East Tremont."

Sure enough, ten minutes later, a text message came from the boy**:** _U no Leech?_

Leech. Hadn't that been the name of the kid Blink had identified as the first to come down with the disease? If Hank couldn't be sure Artie's "Leech" was Blink's, he doubted two mutant boys with the same odd name existed in New York. _Prbly_, Hank typed back from his spot on the train_. Where R U?_

_S. Bronx precinct_

_Stay put. B thr soon._

_K_

And true to his word, Artie was waiting for Hank when he arrived at the South Bronx police station. The boy had already prepared a written explanation while he'd waited, and handed it to Hank. It outlined, briefly, how he'd met Leech, when he'd stopped hearing from him, how he'd read the article in the _Times_ that morning, and then decided to head into the city to see what he could find out. But, of course, the police wouldn't tell a fourteen-year-old boy anything.

Hank took Artie outside to a bench. Sitting down, they watched the river of people flow past on the sidewalk below. "I'm afraid I may have bad news," Hank began.

_He's dead,_ Artie wrote on his pad and held it up.

"I fear so. Can you describe him?"

Artie could have used his imaging telepathy for that, but he'd been refusing to employ it since Jean's death, and now wrote a moment, then passed the pad over, and when Hank read the description of a young teen boy with green skin and no protruding facial features, he closed his eyes. He'd been working on samples from that very boy's body just that morning. "I'm sorry, Artie," he said quietly. "The police found him, along with thirteen others, last Friday."

And even though Artie must have been expecting it, he put the back of his hand up to his mouth, his shoulders jerking from sobs he couldn't vocalize any longer. "Did he have a name besides Leech?" Hank asked. It was suddenly important to him to know the boy's name.

_Danny,_ Artie wrote. _Every1 used Leech - his power. Shut off mutants._

Hank nodded. It sounded fascinating, but this wasn't the time to be fascinated. Twisting on the bench to look at the boy beside him, he stretched an arm across the back - unobtrusive, but available for comfort. "I'll make sure his given name is on his records." It was the best he could offer - some kind of legacy for the dead. Then he rubbed the boy's back while Artie cried.

After a moment, Artie wrote, _What'll happen 2 body?_

"It'll have to be cremated. They died of an unknown virus, and it's important for containment."

_Ashes?_

"I don't know. Do you want them?" It seemed a bit morbid, but aside from Blink, Hank doubted anyone was left to claim the remains. Artie nodded, and Hank patted his back again. "I'll see what I can do. I can't promise, but I'll see what I can do." And then he helped the boy to stand, guiding him towards a subway station. "Let's go home," he said softly. Once they were on the train, headed for Westchester, he called his mother to let her know Artie had been found. It was also on the train back that Hank received a call, alerting him that there had been another death. That brought the total death count up to eighteen.

* * *

"Why does it fucking matter if I'm a mutant or not?" Despite the force of the words, Larry Trask's delivery of them was anything but forceful, weak as he was and hooked up to oxygen and various fluids. He could barely lift his arm off the hospital bed.

"We're trying to isolate the virus that's causing this infection," said the doctor who'd come to speak with him, some guy named Moger or Moser - or Moaner. Larry resisted smiling at his own bad pun. The doc was all covered up in protective garb where he sat in the chair at Larry's bedside. "Till now, it seems to have targeted only mutants, and if we can establish with certainty that you're not one, then it adds a piece to the puzzle."

Larry tried to glare, but knew it lacked conviction. "You don't have a goddamn clue what this is, do you?" he asked.

"I'm afraid we don't at this point, though we do have some leads. Thus, the more information we can gather, the quicker we can find a cure."

"But not before it kills me," Trask concluded, having learned to read between the lines for what wasn't being said. And he found that he didn't really care if his contribution "furthered science." He was going to die. He should have felt more responsibility as a member of the human race, and might later, but was too angry and resentful just at the moment. He was going to die. It was hard to care about anyone else just then. As an agent, he might have chosen to put his life on the line to preserve justice, but it was one thing to die bravely in the field, quite another to die of a damn mutant disease that had him spewing from both ends. Where was the dignity in that?

"Actually, it may not kill you," said the doctor. "Some who've come down with it have survived, and since you're the first non-mutant to contract it, we can't say if that'll make a difference."

Trask grabbed onto that hope and clung. "How can you tell if someone's going to live?"

"We can't for sure yet."

"So why do you need a DNA test? I told you I'm not a mutant."

"It's not that I disbelieve you, Agent Trask, but science requires verification - as I'm sure you understand, being an FBI agent. You're accustomed to facts and data, too, just like we are."

Pricked by the reminder, and not wanting to seem irrational, Larry frowned. "All right, you can do the damn test - but I have one requirement of my own." He'd sensed that he had the doctor over a barrel, and now pointed weakly to the curtain between his bed and the next one. "Get me out of the same room as that freak."

The doctor's face remained neutral, but Larry didn't think he approved of the request as he handed over the clipboard with the form for Larry to sign. Larry scrawled his name, and didn't give a damn if the doc approved or not as long as it got him a private room. Then the doctor took some inner cheek samples with a swab, and left.

An hour later, Larry was moved to a private bed, and three hours after that, he slipped into a coma, just like the other (now) five patients who hadn't survived. His girlfriend, and his FBI partner were called into the hospital and told it could be any time, though for reasons of containment, they weren't allowed to enter his room. For a while, Larry fought, but at four-oh-nine Saturday morning, Lawrence Trask became victim number twenty, and among the fastest to succumb to the disease.

* * *

Ororo was waiting anxiously at the front door as Hank McCoy and his charge were dropped off by a taxi on the circular front drive. "Artie!" she said as he dragged himself up the steps, "Do not ever do that again." The words fell somewhere between anxiety and an admonition. "You had all of us very concerned."

And from behind her, Terry Roarke snapped, "Aye, you big oaf! You wouldna return my calls nor messages!" Yet Ororo thought the girl's indignity hid a real fear at having betrayed Artie's confidences. If Ororo believed that honoring confidences was admirable, in this case (as she'd stressed to Terry earlier), the girl had done the _responsible_ thing by alerting the mansion to Artie's absence - and also his possible whereabouts.

Now, irritated and uncertain, Artie scribbled, _Am fine,_ on his pad and held it up.

Nodding, Ororo opened the door wider so that he could enter, and said, "I am sure the professor will wish to speak with you later. I think you realize you did a foolish thing, yes?" Putting it as a question forced students to think about consequences, she'd found.

Artie dropped his eyes, but didn't respond even as Hank, carrying luggage and a suitbag, mounted the steps behind him. "Where _is_ the professor?" Hank asked. "I need to speak with him as soon as possible."

"He is still in the sub-basement, in Cerebro," Ororo replied as her eyes ran over Hank's bulky frame. He looked exhausted. "Come in, please," she said now, "Before you fall over."

Artie had already swept past her, Terry in his wake, no doubt headed for the library computer lab, where they could talk freely. Hank followed the boy in and set down his bags even as his mother entered the foyer area, hurrying over to hug him. He hugged her back, holding her a little longer than usual, Ro thought.

Then both of them turned to face Ororo. "When will the professor be out?" Hank asked.

"We don't know," Edna replied.

"What's wrong?" Ororo asked, suspicious of Hank's presence and of Edna's anxiety ever since talking to him earlier.

"I wish I knew," Hank replied. "The most I can say right now is that we have a new virus that's targeting mutants in particular, although that may just be an artifact of its initial spread - the original carriers all seem to have been mutants who interacted only with other mutants. But whatever it is, this virus kills, and kills quickly, like Ebola."

Eying both of them, he said, "I hate to be the doom-crier spreading warnings of apocalypse - but I confess, I _am_ deeply concerned."

* * *

"A _mutant_-targeting disease?"

Erik - Magneto - sounded dubious at best, but Mystique simply passed over the paper, which read**:** **Mystery bug fells muties in Bronx**. He quirked an eyebrow. "Raven, please - this is the _Post_, for heaven's sake."

"I'm aware of that. But nothing is being said yet through official channels, although even the _Times_ reported on the deaths - and that the Department of Public Health is involved."

"Of course they'd be involved; more than a dozen bodies were found in an abandoned building. But that hardly leads to a mutant epidemic, my dear."

"I found a bunch of stuff about it on the Web," said a third voice. "_Yahoo News_ is running something off Reuters, and the most recent reports say there's some guy from the CDC in the city to check it out." St. John handed Mystique some printouts and she perused them while Magneto watched, expression still skeptical. He was often dubious of pop-culture sources, but Mystique found them to be useful as long as one kept certain caveats in mind.

Now, as she read, a familiar name leapt out, and left her laughing as she handed over the papers to Magneto. "'Inside sources say," she quoted, "'that a Dr. Henry McCoy has been sent to New York from the Atlanta CDC.' Would he give me a personal interview, do you think? Xavier's crew still owes me one."

Magneto's lips had quirked. "Indeed, this may be worth investigating." He glanced up and nodded to her. "Take Pyro. An information-gathering mission would be excellent experience for him." He eyed the boy then. "Do _exactly_ what Mystique tells you, understand?"

St. John nodded, trying not to look excited, and failing.

"Go pack," Mystique told him. "Plan for a week's stay - but travel light."

* * *

**Notes:** The commissioner of public health in NY is, in fact, a woman, but mine is fictional. Likewise, St. Luke's does have a division of infectious diseases, but no Dan Moser works there. Discussion of the virus I owe to Leslie, a virologist, to whom I'm eternally grateful for her patience in explaining all this to me via multiple emails. If I made any mistakes, I'm quite sure it's because I didn't understand what she told me. Many thanks to ridesandruns as well for NY newspaper headlines, and etc.


	23. In Love With Your Ghost

If their silly pillow war had released a little tension for Jean, Scott, and Warren, the brief phone conversation with Xavier brought them back to reality.

"Charles is on the way down to Cerebro right now," Jean told them as she hung up the phone, face somber once more. "He wants to have a consultation. I'll link us all together."

"The telepathic version of a conference call?" Warren asked.

"Essentially, yes."

Scott just nodded, then they waited until she felt the familiar brush of the professor's mind against hers. She opened to embrace him, and for a few moments, there was nothing but joy.

Scott had always been the child of Charles's heart. Jean was something else - not his daughter, but his doppelganger, his telepathic match, his protégée and successor. Scott would one day run the school and the X-Men, but Jean would carry forward the torch of his dream, his Olympic runner.

Or so he'd thought until Alkali, and he couldn't hide from her now the grief that he'd hidden from the rest, even Scott. Especially Scott. They'd all been hurting enough; it wasn't something he could lay on their shoulders. So he'd grieved alone, just as he'd prepared to go forward alone for as long as he could.

Now, he no longer had to, and for a moment they blended amazement in their impossible reunion with the happy release of his grief. Then she gave him everything that had happened to her since Alkali. And he gave her everything that had happened at the mansion.

It was quite the tale, and left them both unnerved. Joy might have momentarily concealed deeper anxieties, but Charles couldn't hide those from her, either. Like Warren, she worried him - even scared him. The power she wielded lay so far beyond the pale of anyone else, that the only check on Jean was Jean. _I'm scared, too,_ she told him. _I just want to be _me_ again. I don't want to hurt anyone._

_Fear is human; hold onto it. Not the crippling kind, but the kind that makes you wise, makes you consider others. When all else fails, your fear will keep you humble._

He was quoting _Proverbs_ - "Fear is the beginning of wisdom" - and he gave back to her a memory of her much younger self**:** a tall, awkward teen sitting with him in his room before the fire, sharing tea and talking about power, and fear. She'd been so afraid of everything then in her waking hours, but so fearless on her telepathic journeys into the minds of others. Yet she'd been fearless only because those journeys weren't real, at least not for her, and learning to recognize that those people weren't actors and their lives weren't her entertainment had been an important step towards her own maturity.

"Fear is the beginning of wisdom," he'd told her, explaining that the Hebrew word didn't really mean fear of the quaking kind, but fear that recognized limits and respected them, fear that sprang from awe at the vastness of the universe and everything greater than the self. "Fear isn't cowardice. Even a brave man - or woman - is afraid."

But she'd never been brave, had she? She'd avoided pushing herself, held back on the choke collar of her mother's concern, which may have sprung from love, but which had smothered her. It was the same protectiveness that Scott sometimes evinced, and she'd snuggled down inside it, conditioned to be content while secretly chaffing.

Xavier broke into her thoughts, _A _cowardly _woman wouldn't have left that plane, Jean._

_I didn't leave it for bravery,_ she replied, realizing the truth of the words even as she spoke them. _Bravery means trying even if you don't know you'll succeed. I knew I'd succeed professor._

_And die for it._

She stopped there, withdrawing just a little. There was the edge of something inside that point, something half-seen, as if in profile, and she couldn't uncover it.

_Why did you leave the plane? _He asked her now, just as Scott had.

_I don't know._

_Don't know or don't want to remember?_

_No, I want to remember. I just - it's not there. Maybe it never will be._

And now she felt him withdraw a little as if he, too, were mulling over thoughts he didn't wish to share over their link. She could have peeked. She could - she realized - have stripped him entirely bare. She had that power now. And she was suddenly scared again.

He reached out to her a second time. _I would fear more if you feared less. You have trusted me all these years, correct? _Her mental consent was wordless. He went on, _Then I will trust you. You are not a child, Jean. Be guided by compassion and humility, and you will make the right choices._

_I hope_, she sighed, and wondered if actual breath escaped her physical lips or only the breath of frustrated thoughts. _Is it time to bring them in?_

_If you're ready._

_I'm ready._

And she _reached_ . . . feeling as if she were slipping the bonds of constraining flesh to return to her real self, the will-o-wisp Lady of the Lake, the ethereal creature of fire and air, beautiful and terrible, as she gently gathered up the minds of Scott and Warren, cradling them as carefully as if they were hummingbird eggs. Through their eyes, she could see what they saw in the room with them - the standing figure of Jean Grey, arms spread and cloaked in heatless flame like feathers of brilliant red and orange to rival Warren's white.

Then they all lay there in the cup of her mental hands - Charles, Scott, Warren - no more physical than she had been in the lake. Creatures of light and color and exquisite delicacy**:** Charles in shades of gray and brilliant violet, their enigmatic hermit guide; Scott in golds and blues, their wounded Fisher King; and Warren in greens and whites, their Perceval, pure in his compassion. And she, all red and orange. Their Phoenix.

_You have spent too much time reading Chrétien de Troyes and dreaming of the Matter of Britain,_ Charles admonished with humor.

_It's your fault,_ she replied_. You started it. You gave me T. H. White all those years ago and it snowballed._

And then the moment of lightness was gone. It was time to get down to business.

_There are two basic options,_ Xavier began. _The first is to reveal to Madelyne Pryor's family that their sister and daughter did, in fact, die last October, and Jean's resurrection of Lynn was a mistake, if an innocent one._

_I can't predict what they'd do with that information,_ Jean warned, and was sure they could feel her reluctance to tell them, a reluctance that sprang from fear of the consequences. _I told you I wasn't brave, professor._

_But fear is sometimes pragmatic, my dear. While I normally advocate honesty, honesty isn't always the best policy, and in this case, I think the _kinder_ choice is to conceal the full truth, even though it might be considered "dishonest." Which brings me to the second option - we solve the problem without telling the family what's actually occurred._

Jean relaxed, as did Warren - but it was clear from his resonance that Scott wasn't completely comfortable with that decision. _Isn't that taking the easy way out? _he asked.

_It might be - but that doesn't mean it's not also the right way. In this particular case, what is easiest for us is also kindest for them. Perhaps the best way to evaluate the matter is to ask yourself what purpose telling them would serve?_

_They'd know._

_They'd know what?_

_That -_ Scott stopped, but they could all still hear the end of his thought, whether or not he projected it**:** They'd know their joy and relief at Lynn's resurrection had been a lie, and the tender things they'd said to her had really been said to someone else. That would be incredibly painful.

Xavier gave him a mental nod. _Yes, exactly. The truth would wound them, and change nothing. This was a case of honest error, not deliberate intent to hurt. Jean thought she was_ _Lynn. And if telling them the truth might assuage our consciences, would it help them in any way?_

_It wasn't a game to me, _Jean put in, and here in this mental space, Scott could see the truth of that. It made the matter easier for him to accept even if he weren't entirely comfortable with the solution.

_There is, I fear,_ _no _good_ answer to this problem,_ Xavier said. _So we will choose the least damaging, under the circumstances. Sometimes, that is the best one can do._

_So how do we lay Madelyne to rest? _Warren asked. He'd been silent through the discussion of ethics, probably because - as was often the case - he could see both sides a little too easily. Warren was a pragmatist with a gentle heart, and Jean had always prized him for that.

_Actually, _Jean sent,_ I gave some thought to this whole mess last night, and it may be simpler than you'd think . . . ._

* * *

The unexpected discovery of Jean did not bring everything else to a halt for Scott and Warren, who still had several days worth of business to conclude in Anchorage. And Jean would need to start wrapping up Lynn's brief return to life. "I'll need till Friday," she'd warned them, though she knew Scott was reluctant to let her out of his sight again. Warren made an excuse to go consult with his staff, giving the two of them an hour or so alone together before necessity parted them. Scott was supposed to be at the air cargo offices by noon, and Lynn's mother had already called her once that morning.

"It's just for a little while," Jean told Scott, running her fingers through his hair. They were lying in the big bed, skin-to-skin, having lost little time in getting naked after Warren's departure. But they hadn't made love. She wasn't entirely sure why, but found herself uninterested, wanting only to lie beside him, as if the lamp of her soul could nestle next to his through the fences of their flesh.

Before she'd died, she'd felt at times that her body confined her, and if she could just shed her skin, she'd be more alive. Then she had shed it, and discovered that she needed the corporeal after all. It grounded her in a world of weight and substance and form, and she delighted in the sight and sound, touch and taste of it. So she stroked him all over, the smooth expanse of his back and chest and belly, his arms and thighs, and he was content to be petted, stretching out for her like one of the mansion cats of which he was so fond, relishing the attention. Sometimes (almost in defiance of that sex drive of his) he wanted nothing more than contact, and if she knew why non-sexual touch was so important to him, she still found it endearing. How many women could say their S.O.s genuinely wanted to snuggle with_out_ sex as a prelude?

"Don't worry yourself into fits while I'm gone, all right?" she told him now as he rolled onto his side to press his face against her bare shoulder. His glasses were off and his eyes were closed.

"I'm not worried," he murmured. She didn't believe him, but his anxiety was vague and aspecific, nothing she could respond to directly.

Scooting down until her face was level with his, she whispered, "Let me see your eyes again."

He opened them for her without protest this time. Red glowed in their depths, but mostly she saw blue like the summer sky of his name. And she smiled as an idea came to her. "I can be as close to you as your own thoughts."

His eyebrows lifted in an unspoken question.

"I could link us together, telepathically," she explained.

"That sounds like a science-fiction novel, Jean."

"And shooting force blasts out of your eyes doesn't?"

"Okay - touché." He smiled a little, and after everything, it was good to see his smile. "By 'link,' do you mean an open intercom?"

"Sort of - but before you ask, no, I won't be reading your mind. I know you wouldn't want that, and I wouldn't do it to you. It'd just be . . . like holding hands. Except mentally. We already have the rudiments of a link from being together so long, but I was never strong enough to create a real link before."

He pondered her suggestion, and she waited, having learned patience over the years with Scott. Finally, he said, "If it drove us both crazy, could you remove it?"

"Yes. Absolutely."

"Okay. Then let's try it, at least for a few days. It'd be less obvious than explaining a lot of cell phone calls."

And she laughed at that, leaning in to hug him tightly while reaching out with her mind to his. When she drew away, she could feel the new tie between them, quiescent and fragile, a gossamer thread of awareness. She sat up on the sheets to run a palm over his skin again, from his shoulder across his chest to his hip, and down his outer thigh. "I missed you so," she told him. "Even before I remembered what it was to miss, I missed you."

"Last fall - all those things that happened at the mansion - that was you, wasn't it?"

"Probably. I don't really remember - only in flashes. I remember things in flashes all mixed together. Time doesn't mean much to a ghost." She tried to smile at that but he didn't.

"I couldn't love a ghost," he said. "That's why I told you to leave."

She frowned. "I remember that, I think." Maybe, in fact, she'd needed his rejection in order to find her way back to life. "But I'm not a ghost anymore."

He rolled onto his back, eyes still open and watching her. "What are you?" It wasn't hostile, or wondering, but neutral, all the feelings flat and compressed as if he weren't sure he trusted what he felt. And she considered how to answer. She wanted to reassure him, but needed to do so honestly.

"I'm Jean," she said simply.

That elicited another small smile and he ran the back of his hand down her arm. "I guess that'll have to do for now. I never stopped loving Jean. I never will."

It sounded hyperbolic, but Scott meant it neither as romantic grandstanding nor empty promises. "I know," she said, rising to fetch his glasses off the night-stand and hand them to him. "We ought to get this show on the road."

He reached out to grip her wrist, almost pinching. "Come back to me, Jean."

Bending, she kissed his forehead, like a benediction. "As long as you're alive, I'll never leave you." She wasn't grandstanding, either, or making empty promises.

* * *

Warren had gone for a walk after his brief conversation with his staff. He needed the air.

In less than twenty-four hours everything had changed, just like the previous October when he'd gotten that call, telling him Jean was dead. Now she wasn't. It had come just as sudden and just as unexpected, and he knew he was suffering from emotional whiplash. If grief were a process, what was its reverse? They couldn't be expected just to step back into the lives they'd had nine months ago.

He'd been relatively quiet in the telepathic consultation earlier because of mixed feelings - though he was honest enough to realize that most of those didn't have anything to do with extracting Jean from the life of Madelyne Pryor.

No, he felt bruised by hope, and guilty for the deep-down anger that she could escape the grave to reclaim what had been exclusively his again for a little while. He wondered how long he could continue in the role of third? Balance was supposed to be more solid on three legs than two - but not when it came to relationships.

He wondered where he'd sleep that night. Even if Jean wouldn't be there, she was _back_, and he and Scott had never slept together without her, until she'd been dead.

* * *

When Scott and Warren dropped off Jean - once again looking like Madelyne Pryor - at Lynn's mother's house, she ducked an explanation of exactly where she'd been by suggesting that she and her mother spend the day shopping, just the two of them, since she'd have to start her new-old job the next Monday. Although a bit surprised, her mother agreed, so they took off for the Anchorage Fifth Avenue Mall, four stories full of shops having mid-summer sales. Mary Pryor liked nothing better than sales. They had a ball.

Jean felt the need to give Lynn's family some kind of closure in gratitude for being permitted into their lives, however accidentally. In a few days, Lynn's mother would lose her baby again, and if Jean could ease that even a little, she felt she owed it to her. So in a carefully orchestrated spontaneous burst in the middle of their shopping, she hugged Lynn's mother and said, "I don't do that enough. Or tell you how much I love you. I've been thinking about that since coming back - that I should tell you more often that I love you, and that I'm very lucky to be your daughter."

Was it lying if she wasn't lying? From what she'd learned about Lynn, her borrowed self would have wanted to tell her mother that. Was it wrong to give a dead woman the voice to say what she hadn't had a chance to say?

_But the real Lynn didn't tell you those things herself,_ Scott pointed out to her telepathically later that night. _You're assuming you know what she'd have wanted. You can't do that._

_Everything I've found out about her tells me she'd have said that to her mother if she could have._

_Jean . . . hon, I know you're trying to make all this easier on them, but you have to be careful. Don't put words in someone else's mouth, okay? You may have thought you were Lynn, but you're _not_ Lynn._

She understood the point Scott was trying to make, but he didn't realize just how well she'd come to know the other woman in this past month. She'd lived Lynn Pryor's _life_. Nonetheless, she said, _I'll do my best,_ because there was something else more pressing. _Listen, tonight - sleep with Warren, just like you would have if I wasn't back, okay?_

His uncertainty spilled over into the link. _I'm not sure that'd be a good idea._

_Scott - it doesn't mean any more today than it did the night before last. He's afraid he's losing you to us._

Scott didn't reply, but she could sense that he knew it, too.

* * *

That night, Warren honestly didn't know what to do. Should he assume he'd sleep alone, or sleep with Scott? Scott wasn't helping, either, having disappeared into the master suite to putter around. He'd said nothing one way or the other.

Opting for indecision, Warren settled on the couch in the suite's sitting room to watch TV. After a while, Scott came out of the master suite to ask, "You coming to bed? We have to be up early tomorrow."

And that easily, it was settled. No professions of eternal loyalty or love required. Warren had all he needed.

* * *

The next day, a Wednesday, Jean-Lynn woke complaining of a headache, but brushed off her mother's concern, settling for Excedrin and a half-hour nap. She said she felt better, and that evening, she and her mother went over to her sister's house. She played Frisbee with her niece and nephews before dinner, and after, helped her sister clean up in the kitchen. As they worked, Annabelle said, "This sounds dorky, but I missed fighting with you over who has to wash, and who gets to dry."

It made Jean-Lynn smile, and while she respected Scott's caution, she still reached into a pocket of her vest, pulling out the little present she'd bought at the mall the day before - a silver bracelet inscribed _My Sister, My Friend_. Maybe it was Hallmark corny but when she handed it over - "I saw that yesterday, when Mom and I were out" - she received a crushing hug in thanks, and returned it with an enthusiasm that wasn't faked.

On the drive back from Annabelle's, she complained of headlights bothering her eyes, and her mother suggested getting her eyes checked. She'd never needed glasses before, but she was approaching forty. She agreed, and made an appointment for the following Tuesday. She knew it wouldn't matter by then, but it contributed to the telltale trail that they'd remember later.

Her Thursday afternoon was spent at the humane society, saying quiet goodbyes, and she felt herself slipping into that foggy numbness that came from facing life at the edge - a sense of slow disconnection. She found it hard to focus on the small things; they no longer mattered. Her laundry could wait, and so could the dishes in the sink after dinner that night. She watched _CSI_ with her mother (and bit her tongue to keep from correcting all the medical flub-ups that Lynn couldn't possibly know).

Friday, she woke in the early morning hours to put Lynn's room in order as best she could - not in a way that obviously closed a door, but so there would be less for anyone else to do. She and her mother worked in the garden until noon, then had tuna fish for lunch, and it seemed to her that the press of death painted the edges of everything more sharply, enriching the senses. The yellow of the sunflowers along the back fence matched her mother's garden hat, and there were too many sweet pickles in the tuna, but she liked it that way. She hoarded these bright and precious things, and smiled a lot.

That afternoon, her mother had a stress test scheduled with her cardiologist, which would likely take a while. That was why Jean had chosen Friday, and she made sure to kiss Mary Pryor goodbye, then listened for the growl of the garage door opening and shutting. Satisfied that Lynn's mother was gone, she settled a few last things - a vase full of those sunflowers on the kitchen table, all the dishes washed from the night before, the front bathroom cleaned and the carpet vacuumed because she doubted her mother would have time before the wake. She made sure the cat had lots of food, and the litter box was clean. Then kissing her kitty, she went to lie down on the couch with a book. She didn't want Lynn's mother to find Lynn's body sprawled inelegantly on a floor somewhere.

Now came the tricky part, and she wondered if she could manage this. But she'd died once before, and survived, and now that she knew what it felt like, she'd be prepared for what came after. She sent a brief telepathic message to Scott, warning him that it was time. Then she shut her eyes and laid her book face down over her chest, pulling her awareness inward and reaching with a mixture of power and knowledge.

Dr. Jean Grey found the arteries and veins deep within the reconstructed brain of Madelyne Pryor, weakening the wall of one so that it swelled like a water balloon until the pressure burst, creating a fast hemorrhage in the area of the brain stem. The pain was intense, and her heart stuttered and fought, but she'd made certain to grow the aneurysm large enough to be unquestionably fatal.

This juncture was her moment of truth. Focusing, she ripped herself free of the flesh and blood that she'd put on over five weeks ago, becoming again a creature of air and fire, a discorporate spirit, watching calmly as the form on the couch spasmed once, twice, and died. She grieved, but it felt distant and fuzzy, as if she were trying to touch the emotions through wool. Yet she still hovered a while, examining the shell of clay she'd built and inhabited - pitiable, fragile, but wonderful for that fragility.

Then the Lady of the Lake turned away and drifted through the walls of the Mary Pryor's house, leaving Lynn's body behind.

This was the right choice, if inconvenient. Madelyne's body belonged to Madelyne, and this time, the family would have something to bury. Jean had made sure there was money to do so, too - a recent deposit to Lynn's limp bank account from the new owner of Summers Air Cargo. They'd called it a 'consult fee' to avoid questions.

Thus, Madelyne was legitimately dead once again, and it would even appear to be from the head injuries sustained in the same accident that had, in fact, killed her - a neat closing to the circle. Now it was time for Jean to return to her own life, without detours.

* * *

Back at the hotel suite, Scott and Warren were working over papers and budgets, settling final details and stopping sometimes to look at the clock. Jean had told them to be in the room by mid-afternoon - alone - so here they were, waiting.

Warren watched Scott closely, had been watching him for the past three days and two nights. Scott had been distracted, irritable, or existing in limbo. To say this separation was hard on him would have been a severe understatement, though the link Jean had set between them seemed to ease his distress somewhat. He'd told Warren about it, that first night, and apparently the two of them had been using it to communicate because Scott would unexpectedly check out sometimes and sit, staring into nothing. Now, he paused in reading back figures. "She's getting ready to do it." His grip on the pen was strong enough to turn his knuckles white.

On Tuesday, Jean had reassured them that she could manage this, and it made the simplest and neatest solution to the problem. They'd believed her. But they'd had time since to think, and both had come to fear that her plan might not work after all. She might die for real this time.

Was it terrible that Warren had entertained dreams (not nightmares) where that happened? But in his waking moments he prayed for Jean's safety. So did Scott. He'd asked on Thursday to drop by the Catholic church his parents had attended years ago, the church where he'd been baptized as an infant. He'd lit candles for his parents, then had gone to sit in a pew for a while, head bowed. Warren had let him be, saying only, "She'll be fine," when Scott had come out again.

"I know," Scott had replied. "She promised she'd never leave me again."

And those words had creeped Warren out because he suspected she really could make that promise, and found it unnerving. But now, they were about to discover for sure if that were true, and Warren watched Scott wince, as if suffering the backflow of whatever Jean had felt. Then he shook his head once, and turned to look at Warren. "Can you still feel her?" Warren asked.

Scott nodded. "It's . . . different, but I can feel her. She's still with us."

And so they waited.

It didn't take long. Ghosts were bound by neither time nor distance, and Jean's spirit covered half of Anchorage in a matter of minutes, entering the suite from the direction of the balcony overlooking the bay. She was a faint, wispy creature formed of ethereal fire, and Warren was reminded of stories of the jinn. She paused in the suite living area, near the wet bar, and Scott rose from the table to approach her. He didn't seem afraid. Warren followed in his wake, wings spread as wide as the confines of the room would allow.

She had wings, too, and a form somewhere between woman and bird.

"Jean," Scott said.

For a moment, they all hung suspended in their places, as if frozen, then the fire of her form began to pulse, growing more intense, light coalescing, bright, bright, until it stung the eye and Warren had to raise a hand to shield his. Scott didn't. He just stood there, waiting.

The air itself warped, as if superheated, and _tore_.

A woman stepped out of it.

Jean Grey.

She was smiling, and as naked as the day she'd been born, but lust wasn't what she inspired in the two men watching. Reaching out, she laid both her hands in Scott's, and for just an instant, Warren feared that her touch would incinerate him.

It didn't. She was just a woman of flesh and bone and blood, and Scott pulled her to him, hugging her tightly. She returned the hug for a moment, then reached past him towards Warren. "Come on," she said, waving him over.

He relented, and let himself be hugged, too.

Flesh and bone and blood, indeed. There was nothing unusual about her; she looked just the same as she ever had right down to her imperfections - the funny ears, the limp hair, the bony wrists and elbows and knees. She could have subtly 'fixed' any of that, but she hadn't. She was still a tall, thin Amazon of a woman with fine bones and striking eyes and fair skin that flushed too easily - beautiful rather than insipidly pretty. Nothing suggested that this body had been woven from the very air, and she'd been a creature of fire and thought just moment ago. Was she still human if she wasn't human?

* * *

The one aspect of Jean's return that she didn't particularly like, but which she had to agree made pragmatic sense, was the fact that her complete resurrection would have to wait.

_While we might like to have Jean back without subterfuge as quickly as possible,_ the professor said via Cerebro on that Friday afternoon,_ the simplest explanation involves a retread of the tale she's already used with Madelyne - an amnesiac who regained her full memory some months after her Blackout injury. The details can, and of course will, differ, but the basic story would be the same. And if it's unlikely that anyone would connect the death of one such woman in Alaska with the appearance of another in New York, I think it better not to tempt the gods of coincidence. Madelyne Pryor must be dead some months before we bring back Jean Grey._

At least officially.

Unofficially, Jean would return to New York with Scott and Warren on Saturday afternoon. Those who knew the truth about her death - including her parents - would be told the truth of her return to life, as well. But otherwise, she would live incognito.

The professor had kept news of her rebirth to himself until it was certain that Jean's plan had succeeded, but now he would inform the rest of the mansion before she arrived. Ecstatic at her imminent return, part of Jean wanted to surprise them all, but after everything that had happened the previous autumn, she understood how the unheralded advent of a dead woman might not be counted as pleasant by everyone. Besides, this would give Charles the chance to explain what had occurred - so Jean didn't have to do it over and over it again.

The rest of that afternoon was anti-climactic. Scott and Warren finished their budget calculations while an exhausted Jean took a nap. The expenditure of energy required to die and rise had been intense, and even phoenixes needed sleep. By early evening, the budget was finished, and they faxed it all to Scott's cousin, who was now officially taking the reigns of the company. That done, they woke Jean and dressed for a fancy dinner. The occasion called for something special, and even Scott was convinced to forego his usual L. L. Bean wardrobe in favor of a suit and tie. Jean created an evening gown for herself as easily as she'd created the body that wore it. "I'll never have to go clothes shopping again," she told the boys, emerging, ready, from the bathroom.

For a moment, she chalked up their shocked expressions to appreciation for her attire, but then realized that such a cavalier use of her powers had unnerved both men, and she wasn't sure why. Slipping a hand into the elbow of each, she said, "Relax, gentlemen. Don't we tell our students to be proud of their powers, and to use them proactively?"

"We do," Scott answered, but he was still frowning. "It's just going to take time for us to get used to the change, Jean."

She stopped at the door and they both turned as one to look at her. "If you two think you're nervous about all this," she snapped, "remember - it's happening to _me_. How do you think I feel?" Warren had the good grace to blush, and Scott turned his frown down on his feet.

"Sorry," he said. "But it helps to know it worries you, too." And she was reminded of what the professor had said Tuesday morning - he'd be worried more if she were worried less.

"It scares the hell out of me," she told them both bluntly. "But I'm trying not to dwell on it."

Scott raised his face to hers. "Last fall, we swept it all under the rug and tried not to dwell, too - and look where that got us."

"Scott - " Warren began, but Jean interrupted, "He has a point. And I agree - but I'm not going to pretend there aren't perks to the change." And to prove her point, she raised her hand, telekinetically lifting off Scott's glasses - and enjoyed (just a little) Warren's aborted cry of warning. She enjoyed a lot more his dropped-jaw amazement to see the whole face of his friend again after thirteen years.

"You fixed his eyes?" Warren asked.

"No, I'm just holding back the beams for the moment." She grinned, impish. "Now tell me there aren't perks, guys."

Scott snorted. "I didn't say there weren't. That dress is sure as hell one of them. But it's still going to take some getting used to."

"Of course," Jean retorted, "but is the glass half full or half empty?"

"In my experience, the glass usually breaks and spills everything."

"Pessimist," Jean replied, swatting his arm playfully.

"_Cynic. _Not pessimist." Scott gave his quirked-mouth grin. "Pessimists aren't realists anymore than optimists are."

"_Nitpicking_, is what I call it," Warren said, and for a moment, they were them again, grinning at how easily it all came back, and Jean and Warren could even see that the smile had made it all the way to Scott's eyes.

She returned him his glasses. "You'd better put them back on. I don't want to risk my concentration slipping in the cab and you decapitating our driver."

"It'd make a terrible mess," Scott agreed. "We'd never get all the brain matter out of the heater vents."

"God, you're _disgusting_, Gamma Gaze." Warren held the door for them. To Jean, he said, "You look wonderful."

And after that, dinner was all right. Maybe they were sweeping it all under the rug, but it was done without pretending they weren't. Jean would worry about it again later, and so would they, yet for a little while, they sat together at the table and chose to see the glass as half full.

Nonetheless, as Scott had predicted, the glass shattered soon enough. Almost as soon as their dinners were served, Jean felt the familiar tickle of the professor's mind, seeking her attention.

"It's Charles," she said aloud, as if she were receiving a phone call, and then turned her attention inward to her mentor. _Yes?_

_I'm sorry to intrude Jean, but I kept calling your hotel room and got no answer. I'm afraid I have some bad news. Hank arrived at the mansion this evening. He was called into town for an emergency. It seems there may be an epidemic brewing, a virus that targets mutants. For the time being, the three of you may be safer in Anchorage._

_A virus that targets mutants?_

_So it would seem._

She was already pulling her napkin off her lap. _Is Hank there? Does he know I'm back? Could you have him call Scott? I want to talk to him._

_Hank is here and I'll pass along your message. And yes, I've told the staff that you're returning, but I'd planned to wait until morning to tell the students._

_I'll be back by morning. _And she withdrew her mind from Charles', telling Scott, "Hank's going to call you in a minute. Something terrible's happened."

"What?" Warren asked, but Scott's phone interrupted.

Without thinking, Jean floated it off Scott's belt into her hand. "Jean!" Scott and Warren hissed together, but she ignored them, flipping it open.

"Hank? Tell me everything you know . . . ."

Three hours later, the three of them plus Warren's staff had all checked out of the hotel and were headed for Warren's jet at the airport.

"I can't sit in Anchorage," Jean had insisted. "Hank needs me. Nobody knows the mutant genome as well as I do."

* * *

**Notes:** The chapter title comes from an old Indigo Girls' song.


	24. Interlude 2: Assembly

The staff gathered in Xavier's office on Friday after supper, and it said quite a lot about the peculiar nature of the school that its headmaster could call a staff meeting on a Friday evening and expect them to attend. The professor had both brandy and tea available on a sideboard, and soft music on the stereo - and knowing Xavier, Logan doubted any of that was accidental. Xavier didn't hide behind the wall of his desk, either, but motored out to join them in the open area in front of it - a show of solidarity. This evening, he was one of them, not Professor X. To Logan's surprise, Hank McCoy was there, and Logan eyed him with mixed feelings. If he finally understood why the other man had challenged him back in November, he wasn't big enough to get past the resentment immediately. Just now, though, McCoy looked exhausted, plopped on the couch at the room's rear, a glass of brandy in hand.

"I realize that what I am about to tell you will come as something as a shock," Xavier began once everyone had settled in with the beverage of their choice. "There is no way adequately to prepare you for the news, so I will just state it bluntly." A momentary pause. "Jean is alive."

A disbelieving silence greeted that announcement. Logan, no less than the rest, tried to make sense of three words. "Alive?" Ororo said finally. "Not a . . . ah . . . ."

"Ghost? No, Ororo, she is very much in the flesh. Although we - and by 'we,' I mean myself and Jean - do concur that the peculiar events we experienced here last fall were, indeed, caused by her . . . consciousness, for lack of a better word. Her spirit, if you will."

Finally finding his voice, Logan said, "You wanna explain how she's _alive_ nine months later?"

Xavier smiled his annoying little smile, and replied, "That _was_ the intent of this meeting." And he proceeded to tell them what he'd learned from Jean the previous Tuesday. Mostly, the staff listened with minimal questions, and he ended with, "Jean will be returning to the mansion tomorrow, along with Scott and Warren, although for a variety of reasons, we have agreed that - for the moment - the only ones to know of her rebirth will be the same ones who know the truth of her death. For a while, at least, that seems the prudent choice."

"So she's just gonna hang out here?" Logan asked, still trying to wrap his mind around it all, not to mention his feelings. With the rediscovery of his life _before_ - and Mariko - he'd thought himself over Jean. And in one respect, he was; he now had a context in which to place his infatuation. Nonetheless, it _was_ an infatuation and his breathing sped up at the thought of seeing her again. Maybe that wasn't right, but feelings obeyed neither logic nor ethics. His actions were another matter, however. "How's the kid taking this?"

"If by 'the kid' you mean Scott, he is as astonished as the rest of us, but adjusting. This has come as a surprise to everyone - including Jean. And Jean understands the need for caution, although she is no more pleased by the delay in her public return than anyone in her position would be."

Logan thought Xavier was making a point of underscoring Jean's commonality with the rest of them. "You sure this _is_ Jean and not someone, or some_thing_, else?" It wasn't polite, but then, he was a cantankerous old coot, not Mr. Manners. And from a few of the glances shot his way, he suspected at least half the staff had been wanting to ask the same thing.

Xavier just nodded. "It's Jean. She is much stronger than the woman we knew, in terms of her powers, but it is unquestionably Jean."

"You said she was a lot stronger - could she be fooling you?"

Xavier actually appeared to consider that, or maybe he was just being polite to Logan. "I doubt it, although I can't rule it out entirely. Nevertheless, in this, I don't think she could fool Scott, and Warren. I believe they would suspect if she were an imposter and they have no such hesitations, Scott in particular."

"Not Warren?" Ororo asked.

"Warren is . . . unnerved, but not skeptical. Jean _has_ experienced an enormous power jump - which brings me to my next point. This will take some adjustment for all of us, and feeling 'unnerved' is an honest reaction. We shouldn't feel ashamed if we do."

Xavier was headed into psychobabble, Logan thought. He respected the old man and knew Xavier knew his shit (_'Old man' - he's younger than you,_ he reminded himself) - but sometimes the switch into professional psychologist seemed as obvious as a flare.

"All that said," Xavier continued, "Jean is unnerved herself, but she _is_ still the Jean we knew, and I want all of us to remember how _we_ sometimes feel when faced by suspicion and doubt from non-mutants. We need to help her adjust, not doubt her." And the three of them in the room besides Xavier who'd been on that plane with Jean understood exactly. If what she'd done then was any indication, she was as far beyond any of them as they were beyond non-mutants.

Yet while Xavier insisted she was still the old Jean, Logan wondered. His own mutation had altered his life, and not just since the adamantium. It was a long-term thing. He was a different man because he couldn't die (at least, not easily). This might be their Jean, but she wasn't going to be the _same_ Jean, especially not in the long run, and they were kidding themselves if they expected her to be. Logan didn't want to point that out right now, but hoped he wasn't the only one thinking it.

Hank McCoy took the momentary silence as an opportunity to speak up. "I have some news, as well. Charles, I'd planned to discuss this with you when you were finished in Cerebro, but as you called a staff meeting, I decided it'd be easiest to tell all of you at once - though I wish my news were as happy as the professor's."

That got everyone's attention, and they turned to look at him where he was sprawled on the couch. "We've got a nasty bug loose in New York, and so far, all the victims sans one have been mutants." He eyed each of them in turn. "I can't say for absolute certain that this is a new virus - and won't be able to for at least a week - but I suspect it. Its symptoms look very much like African Ebola, and it's loose in East Tremont - Mutieville. Given the reluctance of mutants to seek medical treatment, I fear that many will stay away from hospitals until they collapse - like the original fourteen, and that, in turn, will make it only that much harder to contain. I strongly encourage that we ban our students from going into the city for the time being, although at this juncture, what I've just told you should not leave this room. Well, except for Scott, Warren and Jean - who may prefer to stay where they are."

A second silence greeted this news, but one more ominous than the first. Only Edna and Ororo didn't look surprised, and once again, Logan found himself voicing the question he thought the rest were probably asking themselves. "You saying we got a mutant plague on our hands?"

"That description may be a bit premature, but unfortunately, yes, it's possible, if we can't contain it quickly, and if non-mutants can become carriers . . . something of which I'm not yet certain. If it passes only from mutant to mutant, it will be much easier to contain in the general population, though it would spread rapidly in areas with high concentrations of mutants, such as Mutieville."

"Or the school," Xavier finished, expression grim.

"Exactly," Hank said. "That's why we need to keep the kids up here, for the time being. Fortunately, they're more inclined to go out locally than into the city, but if one of them did contract the virus and brought it back here, it could spread throughout the whole school before he or she even began to show symptoms."

"What about Artie?" Edna asked, as if only now recognizing the threat, but Hank was shaking his head.

"If Artie were going to come down with it, he would have already. His last contact with a known carrier was two months ago -"

"A known carrier?" Xavier asked, eyebrows rising.

"Long story, Charles," Edna McCoy said. "I'll explain later." Which was her polite way of telling him not to go off on a tangent, and Logan grunted softly to himself in approval. Whatever the kid had done, Logan would get it out of him later. Right now, he wanted to hear the rest of what McCoy had to say.

"In any case," Hank continued, "he doesn't appear to have come into contact today with anyone infected. My preliminary theory is that the virus is spread only through body fluids - much like Ebola or AIDS. Neither of those is really airborne, and both are rather fragile, as viruses go. Outside of the host, they die quickly; it's only when they are within a host that they are persistent and deadly."

"They are hard to catch," Kurt summarized from his perch on the other side of the couch with Hank, "but then hard to kill, _ja_?"

"That's right."

"What about a vaccine?" Ororo asked.

"Unfortunately, viruses of these types don't lend themselves to vaccines, and even if we can produce one, getting it approved for use in the U.S. is a long-term proposition. The FDA has extremely tight regulations on drug approval - and that's _after_ we've got a vaccine in hand. This will wind up being about control and management, not a cure - not immediately."

"We cannot keep the children in the house forever," Kurt said.

"Nor will we have to - but I believe it a good idea until we know more about this disease, and until I can talk to them about prevention and safety. Right now, I'm not free to do that."

The professor had been mostly silent through all of this, frowning fiercely, chin in hand. Now, he straightened. "In the interest of avoiding undue speculation among the masses, I think this better handled on an individual basis than as a general announcement. Students are required to notify one of us if they plan to leave the grounds, and must have a chaperone over eighteen to travel into the city, so barring any 'sneaking out'" - here he shot Edna a glance, probably in reference to whatever Artie had done - "I think it should be easy enough for us to restrict their access to unsafe areas until such a time as Henry has information for the public."

"Areas north of here, rather than south, are more likely to be safe for now," Hank clarified. "I can't predict how fast this will spread, but it's already escaped the Bronx."

"So be it," Xavier said.

"What about the older kids?" Logan asked. "Pete ain't required to check in, and he heads down to Brighton Beach about every Sunday."

Xavier glanced at Hank, but Logan spoke again before either of them could. "I say we just tell him. He's a smart kid, and he knows how to keep his mouth shut. We might better tell all the trainees. Some of the kids might try to slip the noose, and to be honest, those four are more likely to hear about it than any of us. Plus don't Artie already know? And if he knows, I bet Terry knows by now."

"On the train back, I impressed on Artie the need for discretion," Hank said. "He gave me his word that he wouldn't tell any other students yet, even Theresa."

"I hope Jubilee, likewise, can practice _discretion_," Ororo added, sounding amused but skeptical.

"You let me handle Jubilation," Edna said.

"I'll talk to the other three," Logan added, before Xavier could nix the idea. Logan couldn't be sure he would, but Xavier liked his secrets. He'd known about Jean since Tuesday, apparently, and was only now telling them - plus he'd sure as hell known about William Stryker for a while. Logan wouldn't have trusted him if he didn't trust him (illogical as that sounded). But he believed that kids old enough to learn to fight were old enough to hear some unpleasant truths.

Xavier traded a stare with McCoy, and Logan suspected they were consulting telepathically, then Xavier said, "All right. We'll inform the four trainees, but otherwise, this news stays under the table for now. I will see all of you in the morning, when I plan to call an assembly to tell the students about Dr. Grey."

Logan snorted, imagining the hoopla that would unleash - and hoping the gossip would distract the kids enough to keep them from wondering why no one was getting a pass to go into the city for a while.

* * *

A mandatory school assembly was held at nine o'clock Saturday morning - late enough to let students sleep an hour longer than on school days, but still early enough to elicit grumbles . . . until they heard what the professor had to say.

After the assembly, students gathered in anxious knots to discuss this latest development in the soap opera that was Life at Mutant High. Kitty, however, headed up to her dorm room alone, unsure what to think of the news that Dr. Grey hadn't died. She thought she ought to be happy - and she was, at least for Mr. Summers who'd been so _sad_ for months - but she was weirded out more. Professor Xavier had assured them all that Dr. Grey looked the same as she had before - she wasn't a ghost or anything - and it really _was_ Dr. Grey, not a substitute (like Mystique who'd masqueraded as Bobby). But Kitty still wondered. After all, what did you say to someone who'd died, but hadn't?

Kitty wondered, too, about the pictures of Dr. Grey as a young girl that had been left on her bed the previous fall. From what the professor had said, it must have been Dr. Grey herself who'd left them - and who had to know what Kitty had said to Jubilee, Rogue and Bobby, and what Dr. McCoy had said to her after. That was a little freaky - the kind of thing the professor could do, not Dr. Grey. Still, leaving the pictures hadn't been _mean_ or anything. Dr. Grey had been trying to make her feel better. In fact, it was exactly the kind of thing she'd have done before, if she'd known - but before, she'd have known only if Kitty had come to her office to tell her. Kitty wondered if she should thank her for the pictures, or would she even remember what she'd done as a ghost?

Just half an hour after the assembly, Jubilee and Rogue returned to their room with Bobby and Piotr in tow, and told Kitty to get lost for a while. "X-Men business," Jubilee said, a little self-importantly, and shut the door, leaving Kitty and her computer standing in the hall.

Irritated to be locked out of her _own_ bedroom, she decided she would find out what they were talking about, come hell or high water - but knew better than to try sticking her head back through the door. Instead, she hurried down to the room beneath, which happened to be the science lab furnished with long tables. On a Saturday, no one was there. Climbing up on a table, she was still a foot short of the ceiling, but she'd learned that if she went insubstantial, she could walk on air. She wasn't very good at it yet, but just now she concentrated hard and 'walked' to the edge of the room where the rear of her own room would be - probably directly underneath Rogue's bed, where she could hear without being seen. Then she pulled herself up through the ceiling-floor, her head popping out square in the middle of one of the bed legs, and she moved sideways - more because it seemed strange to have a bed leg going through her skull than because she felt anything. She hoped no one would come into the science lab, or they'd get a fright (and probably startle her into falling).

Jubilee, Rogue, Bobby, and Piotr were well into their debate by the time her head popped through. "It could mean a real backlash against mutants," Bobby was saying, sounding worried, and Kitty wondered why Dr. Grey's incognito return would bring a backlash against mutants.

"Possible, but I doubt it," Pete replied. From her hiding place, Kitty could see his feet, closest to Rogue's bed. He was wearing his black hiking boots. "From what Hank said, this only affects mutants and given how _popular_ we are, I think regular humans will celebrate, not go on a witch hunt."

"But he's not _sure_ it affects only mutants," Jubilee countered. "He just _thinks_ so. And he did say there's that G-Man who got it and died, and _he_ wasn't a mutant."

Pete grunted. "I got the impression Hank isn't so sure. The guy just said he wasn't a mutant. That's why they're testing his DNA."

Kitty was well and truly confused now. Whatever they were discussing, she doubted it had anything to do with Dr. Grey's return.

"But you remember what happened with AIDS," Bobby said, apparently unwilling to give up on his vision of pogroms. "Everybody said it was God's punishment on gays and started beating them up."

"Bobby," Jubilee replied, sounding vaguely tired, "'everybody' didn't say any such thing, just asshole idiots, and anybody _could_ catch AIDS, if they weren't careful. It sounds like this new Mr. Nasty Virus just affects mutants."

New Mr. Nasty Virus? Hidden under the bed, Kitty squeaked before she could stop herself, and all conversation went immediately silent. She saw Piotr's shoes turn, and afraid of being caught, lost all concentration, dropping back through the ceiling and onto the hard floor below. "Ouch." Getting to her feet, shaky with adrenaline, she rubbed her backside, then grabbed her laptop and headed out the door into the columned rotunda . . . only to hear feet thundering down the grand staircase ahead.

Bobby and Jubilee turned the corner into the hall leading to the rotunda. "Pryde!" Jubilee shouted.

Kitty decided to play dumb. "What?"

"Don't _even_ bother pretending," Jubilee scolded as she came to a halt in front of her, fists on hips. "I _saw_ you coming out of the science lab."

"So?" The doors to the dining hall were on Kitty's left, and briefly, Kitty considered ducking through them and running.

"'So' nothing. It's right under our bedroom."

"_So?_" Kitty said again.

"You were snooping, weren't you?" Bobby asked, having come up on Kitty's other side, and now Piotr and Rogue were coming down the hall, as well. Kitty felt caught, and it didn't help that she was shorter than all of them except Jubilee.

"What makes you think I was snooping?" she snapped at Bobby.

"Stop trying to weasel out of it, Pryde," Jubilee replied before Bobby could. "I know you."

A few passing kids slowed to watch the Chosen Four (as some were calling them) ganging up on Kitty, but unfortunately, none of them looked inclined to intervene. Kitty considered spilling the beans right there in public, and getting the others in trouble for letting her overhear - except she suspected that would get _her_ in trouble, too. Still, it annoyed her that Jubilee would just assume she'd listen in - even though that was precisely what she'd done. "Well, for _your_ information, I was just looking for a quiet place to check my email, since you tossed me out of my _own room_." And she tried to stalk past, but Jubilee moved to block her, popping gum.

"That is _so_ not going to fly, Pryde."

"Kitty, let's walk," Pete said before Kitty could reply, and made shooing motions at the other three.

They gave him dubious looks, but departed, Jubilee last. She couldn't resist one final sally. "Maybe there was, like, a _reason_ we asked you to leave? You wouldn't go listening in on Cyclops briefing the X-Men, would you?"

"You're not an X-Man, yet," Kitty retorted.

"Chill, ladies," Piotr said, playing peacekeeper as usual. Jubilee looked set to argue, then stalked off. Piotr turned to Kitty. "Let's go outside."

Unable to turn down an invitation from him, Kitty followed through the science lab, out the side door, and onto the porch. No one was there. "You're taking advantage of me," she said, resentful. What she meant was that he'd taken advantage of her crush.

Grinning, he glanced down at her. "Maybe. But you and Jubes are ammonia and bleach sometimes - better not put together in enclosed spaces. What did you hear?"

The transition was very smooth, and Kitty almost replied before she caught herself. "What makes you think I heard anything?" she asked, stubborn.

"Kits," he warned, still amused, but with an edge that suggested he was going to stop being amused soon.

She sighed and gave in. "Is there really a nasty virus that kills mutants?"

Shoving his hands in his pockets, he looked down at the porch concrete instead of at her. "Yes. You weren't supposed to hear about it - and I assume you can keep it to yourself - but yeah, there is. Information hasn't yet been publicly released because they're still trying to figure out what it is, but that's why Dr. McCoy's back in New York. He's investigating. He's not allowed to talk about it publicly yet, but when he is, he'll explain it to the students and give tips on safety and stuff. The four of us were told, so we could keep an eye on things.

"The virus appeared down in Mutieville, and Hank says it's better if no students go into the city until we know more. The teachers aren't going to announce that though, or everybody'll ask questions. Instead, any requests to visit the city just won't get approved. But now that you know, you can help us make sure nobody sneaks out anyway. This isn't about breaking a rule for kicks. If even one of us gets that virus and brings it back, it could spread through the whole mansion before anyone realized they were sick. People could die."

She drew in a sharp breath. "_Die?_"

Piotr nodded solemnly. "It acts like some kind of mutant Ebola. Not everyone dies, but it's taking out victims about two or three to one." He paused, frowning, then continued, "I want you to know how serious it is, but Dr. McCoy also said there's no reason to think anyone here's infected, and as long as we stay out of the city and be careful, we're not likely to be, either."

"But how can we be _sure_ no one's got it?"

"We can't, but there's reasonable panic, and unreasonable. That's exactly _why_ nothing's being said yet until Dr. McCoy has more info. Once he knows for sure what it is - and how it spreads - he'll tell everybody. Till then, we just keep any students from sneaking out. Got it?"

She nodded, oddly cheered by his trust in her despite the severity of the news he was entrusting.

**Notes:** Yes, I realize that in X2, it looks like Kitty's bed is directly over the den area, and that it seems she was rooming with Siryn (Terry), not Rogue and Jubilee, but for my own reasons, I've switched that around, based more on what we saw in X1, not X2. If the producers can (now) cast three different actresses to play Kitty (!), I can change the location of her bedroom.


	25. Homecoming

Even if Warren's plane had left Anchorage at 11:06 on Friday night, it was almost an eight-hour flight back to New York. With time zone changes and the drive from the airport, they didn't expect to make it to the mansion much before noon.

Jean used the time to study printouts of the data Hank had emailed to Warren (encoded) before they'd checked out of the hotel. Scott and Warren used the time to sleep**:** Warren sprawled on a bench near the plane's tail, his wings sliding out to cover most of the cabin floor, and Scott with his head in her lap. She didn't think Scott was really asleep - he hated to fly if he wasn't in the pilot seat - but at least he was dozing.

Warren's staff mostly slept, too, though Aaron Mayfield was pretending to read one of Ludlum's Bourne books while he watched her over the top of it. Of the three men, he was the only one who knew her on sight, and she'd sifted through his mind enough to know he doubted she really was (the formerly dead) Jean Grey, but if it turned out she was, then her resurrection scared the bejesus out of him. She didn't like the flavor of either thought, but wasn't sure what to do about it. After a while, tired of his covert observation, she slipped tendrils into his mind, tweaking here and there, until he slid into sleep himself, book spread across his chest. That left quiet minds on the plane, just herself and the pilot - and Scott who'd start awake, hear the dull roar of the engines, then drift off again.

About five-thirty Alaska time (nine-thirty Eastern), Scott abruptly sat up and ran fingers through his hair. "I'm going to relieve the pilot, let him stretch his legs a little." Rising, he crossed to the cockpit door, opened it, said something, then disappeared inside. Five minutes later, the pilot emerged, gave her a brief grin, and sprawled on the bench opposite, chin sagging on his chest as he took the opportunity to nap. Jean wondered if Scott were truly being thoughtful, or if he just couldn't stand not having his hands on the controls anymore. She suspected the latter, and, in fact, he flew the rest of the way to New York.

Waking as the plane landed, Warren moved forward through the cabin, his wing rack half on, to request her assistance securing it. As she did so, he asked, "Scott in the cockpit?"

"Where else? The pilot went back up there about forty-five minutes ago, to assist, but I'd bet a whole half-gallon of ice cream that Scott landed us."

He smiled and tapped one temple. "You didn't check?"

Frustrated, she tugged on the rack. "No, Warren. I did not _check_."

His smile fell away and he turned to look at her. "I was kidding."

"I know. But I'm not. I could have checked, yes - but I didn't."

She held his eyes for ten seconds before he dropped his gaze. "Touché," was all he said.

* * *

Warren's limousine was waiting at the airport, just as it had been nine months before when he'd flown into Westchester after receiving news of Jean's death. Now, Jean was with him, and the three of them all piled into the limo's rear. (His staff was returning to the city.) As they rode, he watched Jean stare out at the passing countryside, and thought about what she'd said on the plane. He had to admit that a great deal of his anxiety stemmed less from anything she'd done than from what she _could_ do - which he knew to be unfair. Jean was a doctor, compassionate and deeply moral. She was hardly going to mutate into a super-powered villain. There were worse things, he thought, than having someone that strong on the side of the angels (pun intended).

_Warren,_ he heard suddenly in his head and suppressed a start.

_What?_

_Your assistant, Mr. Mayfield - I'm not sure what to do about him._

Tendrils of alarm snuck back in. _What do you mean?_

_He knows who I am, and was watching me on the plane for a long time. He doesn't believe I'm really me, and doesn't trust me. I'm not sure if we can trust him._

_What would you suggest? _He resisted narrowing his eyes.

_I don't know. _She frowned as she kept looking out the window, and he wondered why she didn't want Scott to hear this exchange. _He's your employee - what would _you_ suggest?_

_He's been with me five years. He knows a lot of secrets._

_Do you think he'll keep this one?_

She sounded worried, and he shoved down his own anxiety to consider the matter more objectively. If he didn't have any fears about Mayfield under normal circumstances - the man was loyal to a fault - this wasn't a "normal" circumstance. He also recalled Xavier's more aggressive approach to security of late. _Could you make him forget?_

_Easily, but the other two saw me as well, not to mention the pilot._

_Could you make them all forget? Or make them all remember a generic hiree?_

_I could do either, but if so, I need to do it now, before there are too many threads. _

Warren thought about it. Xavier had wanted Jean brought back and kept under wraps to re-emerge at the right time. That suggested a need for special caution. _Okay - make them forget entirely; that's probably safest._

She just nodded. There was no outward sign, no waving of hands or wiggling of noses, like _Bewitched_, not even a closing of eyes.

_Is it done? _he asked.

_Done,_ she replied.

* * *

"Welcome home."

Scott opened the mansion's big front door, and Jean entered, Warren behind. The columned main hall was empty except for two figures, sitting on a bench near the door to the professor's office - Jean's parents. They hurried forward even as she ran to meet them. All three embraced, clinging tightly, then Jean drew back to glance about. "Where is everyone?" When they'd set down at the airport, she'd notified the professor that they were on the way.

"The kids are waiting in the dining hall," her father said. "Charles wanted the three of you to get in the door before you were ambushed. Plus, it's lunchtime."

The professor had probably wanted to give her a few moments alone with her parents, as well, Jean thought. She'd called them yesterday after talking to the professor. She would have called the first morning she'd remembered herself, but had known if she'd done so, they'd have headed straight to Alaska, no matter what she might have said to dissuade them, and it would only have complicated things.

"I'll take the bags upstairs," Warren said now from behind, and Jean turned.

"You don't have to -"

"I'll be back down in a minute."

"Warren -"

"I'll _be_ back down. I'm not running off; I'm just taking the bags up." And he walked away, dragging their rolling luggage draped with suitbags.

Frowning, Jean watched him go. "He didn't have to do that."

"Well, it only takes one person," her mother said, oblivious to the dynamics. "You and Scott go on now; the kids are waiting. Then come upstairs. We're in our usual room on the third floor."

She glanced at them both. "Don't you want to eat lunch?"

"We already ate."

"Okay." She kissed their cheeks. "I'll see you in a little while, but then I need to go down to the lab with Hank. Something really important has come up."

"We understand. Charles told us."

Steeling her mind to face a crowd, Jean turned to where Scott waited. He drew her hand up to rest in the crook of his elbow, like a knight with his lady, and led her down the central hallway towards the dining room doors. Opening them revealed the usual boisterous chaos of lunch and nostalgia pierced Jean so that she stood a moment, watching, gripping Scott's arm tightly. Then Terry saw her, and stopped talking in mid-sentence. Silence caught, and conversations stuttered to a stop as heads swiveled. For three beats, no one moved. Then the students did a surprising thing. Almost as one, they rose to their feet and applauded her.

It wasn't what she'd expected, or been prepared for, and even if obviously rehearsed, it was no less sincere for that. "Why are they doing this?" she whispered, but Scott, just as surprised, had no answer.

_You saved their lives. _It was the professor in her head. _Or at least, you saved the lives of some of them, at the cost of your own._

_But I'm not dead._

_No - but you didn't know it wouldn't be permanent when you walked off that plane, did you?_

Tears sprang hot in the corners of her eyes and trickled down beside her nose. She wiped at them surreptitiously, unable to speak. There were no words to contain what she felt in that moment. Letting go of Scott, she moved forward a few steps, and that released something. Children surged forward, ringing her, reaching out to touch her arm, her hand, her shoulder, her back, assuring themselves she was really there. Bursting bright in the minds of everyone present were images of fireworks, courtesy of Artie - the first time he'd used his telepathic imaging since Jean had died. Now, he wiggled his way through the crowd to Jean's side, arms thrown around her and head pressed to her body as if he were four, not fourteen. She hugged him back, still tearing up, but laughing now, too. "I'm home," she kept saying, over and over. "I'm home."

* * *

After dropping off Scott's luggage (Jean didn't have any), Warren returned to his own usual suite, opening windows to air it out and fetching towels from the hall closet. It hadn't been prepared for him, as he hadn't originally planned to return here. The advent of Jean had changed things.

But even after the room was ready for an occupant, and despite what he'd said to Jean, he didn't hurry back downstairs. Standing at the large windows that overlooked the balcony below, he stared up at the sky. He needed the open air; it always helped him to clear his head, but even night flights hadn't been possible from their downtown Anchorage hotel. Here, though, he had sufficient privacy to risk flying. So he shed his jacket and undid the wing rack (much more difficult when he was by himself), then stretched out his wings, flexing the pectoral and deltoid muscles before taking to the sky. The last thing he needed was cramping at two-thousand feet.

Climbing up on the extended ledge (the room had been modified for his sake), he extended his wings, balancing lightly, then launched himself into the blue summer sky, spiraling upward. His wings were constructed for soaring, albeit with an extra joint that bird wings lacked. Hank had once called him a strange cross between a bat and an eagle. Now, he flapped strongly to gain altitude, but glanced down before he got very high - and spotted a distinctive indigo blob crouched on the mansion's eastern gable, near Ororo's attic. Kurt.

Warren considered flying on - Kurt was probably seeking solitude, too - but his curiosity got the better of him. Why was Kurt up there instead of down in the dining hall to greet Jean? Spiraling, he came in to land lightly. "Can I join the party, or would you rather be alone?"

Kurt made a welcoming gesture. "_Bitte. _We shall again be the angel and the gargoyle on the roof."

Warren grinned and settled his wings, crouching down by Kurt. "What brings you to the roof anyway? I figured you'd be downstairs with Ro and everyone else."

"I am not an old friend of _dem Fräulein Doktor_, and this is the coming home for her." Kurt shook his head, then eyed Warren shrewdly. "What brings you to the roof? You _are_ an old friend, _nicht wahr_?"

"I carried up the luggage."

"To the roof?" Kurt seemed amused by this, and was looping his tail.

Warren rolled his eyes. "No, you goose. I carried the luggage upstairs, then thought I'd have a fly before going back down to eat."

Kurt nodded and they sat in silence a minute before Warren asked, point blank, "Are you really up here because you don't think you know Jean well enough, or for other reasons?"

"Are you really up here to return the luggage and fly, or for other reasons?" Kurt's expression was sly.

"That's a polite way of telling me I'm being nosey." Germans, Warren had learned, were less informal and familiar than Americans.

Kurt just grinned. "A little nosey, but it is all right."

"She's not a ghost, you know."

"_Nein. _But what is she?"

That was the real question. "She's Jean." It was all he could say.

"You are certain of this?"

"Yes. The rest of it, I don't know. But she is Jean. And she's not dangerous, or doesn't mean to be. She died to save you, Kurt - all of you."

"_Ja,_ it is true. And she was kind to me, from the first."

"But she scares you." Warren felt surprisingly defensive of her, considering.

"And she scares you."

It wasn't a question, and Warren couldn't deny it. Instead, he said again, "She's not dangerous."

Kurt didn't reply for a while, then he asked a question. "Have you read the Bible, Warren? The story of the Garden of Eden in the _Genesis_?"

Warren blinked, unsure what that had to do with anything. "Yeah, sure, but it was a while ago."

"Do you remember why Adam and Eve had to leave?"

"They ate an apple?" Warren couldn't fathom where this was going.

"They ate the fruit, _genau_. Apple, pear - they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Do you know why?"

"Wasn't there a snake involved somewhere?"

"_Ja_ - the Tempter. But that is not why they ate, not really."

Warren found himself curious. "Why then?"

"They wanted to know the good from the evil. It was not just the Tree of Knowledge, but the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, you see. There are many ways to read that story, but I like the one I was told by an old priest. Adam and Eve fell not because they wanted to be bad. They fell because they wanted to be _good_ - like unto gods. That is how the Serpent tempted them. They wanted the knowledge of God, but did not have the wisdom to use it wisely. We do not do our greatest evil to _be_ evil. Even _Herr_ Hitler did not think he was evil - nor _Herr_ Stryker. We do our greatest evil when we try to do good, but forget we are mortal and lose the humility, _nickt wahr_?"

That interpretation wasn't one Warren had ever heard before. "So you're saying people are bad because they want to be _good_?"

Kurt smiled. "In a manner of speaking. We do bad for many reasons, but I think the greatest evils come from those who try to do what they think is the right thing. The others, they are small evils - of selfishness, of fear, of the idle cruelty. But the worst evils, the _great_ evils, they are done in the name of good, or what the one doing them thinks is good."

Kurt turned his lambent eyes on Warren. "The true devils are thinking they are angels - pardon the pun."

* * *

Things in New York's Mutieville were worse than Mystique had feared. A lot of the sick simply weren't going to the hospital. "There ain't nothing anyone can do, and they'll just stick us in isolation. I don't wanna die alone," she was told on more than one occasion.

"You selfish fool," Mystique snarled back at one woman. "Did it never occur to you that you're _spreading_ the disease? Maybe they can't do anything for you, but at least you could show some consideration for the rest of the mutant community and take your infected self off the street!"

The woman's response was to spit. Fortunately, Mystique was wearing clothes - real clothes - as well as a face mask and latex gloves, which she fully intended to burn as soon as she got out of the area. "Bitch," the woman said. "What's 'the mutant community' ever done for me? Don't you get it? There _ain't_ no 'mutant community.' This place is just a junkyard for human rejects."

Mystique resisted arguing; it wouldn't have mattered, anyway. "Come, John," she said, turning to leave the dreadful, hot, dirty building with its spray-paint artwork on the exterior, and neither running water nor electricity. John rose, too, from where he'd been squatting down to talk to some girl; his gloves were off. Seeing that, Mystique snapped, "Did you touch anything?"

"I don't know - I don't think so."

"Good. Put your gloves back on - now. And follow me."

"Why? Where are we going?" he asked, following her up the old basement stairs and out through the door onto the street. "Aren't we going to do anything for them? I thought we came here to do something?"

"We did. We came to gather information. What do you think I did all yesterday at St. Luke's?"

Removing her face mask and gloves, she placed them in a plastic bag she'd brought, then held the bag open for John to do the same while she glanced around, taking note of the traffic, both pedestrian and vehicular. Not much of either at only 9:38 in the morning - past rush hour, but the shops (however few there were) hadn't yet opened. Excellent; she hadn't missed her window.

The building behind them was being used by the local mutant population as a makeshift clinic for the living; the dead - numbering twenty-seven now - were being stacked in another abandoned building a block over and down one street. She understood they moved new bodies at night. That the locals should have called the morgue to take those bodies away and incinerate them seemed obvious to Mystique, but these people were terrified of calling anyone lest they reveal the extent of infection still in the neighborhood. It might result in a raid by Public Health to find the sick still hiding. It probably would, but Mystique thought matters past intervention by the authorities. This had to be brought to an immediate halt.

"Since you so desperately want to 'do' something," she said to John, "you're about to get your chance." She turned to look at him. "I hope you're tough enough."

He threw out his chest, as she'd fully expected him to, and said, "I'm plenty tough. I can do whatever I have to."

She permitted him a smile. "Good." In fact, she wasn't at all convinced he could do it, but ego stroking might help, and she needed St. John Allerdyce's very unique power. "Come with me."

She led him down and over to the building where the dead bodies had been concealed. She'd lit a cigarette - an old habit, a waste of money she no longer pursued, but it was also unremarkable. Now she smoked as they walked, and when they passed the informal morgue, she tossed the butt near a wooden door lintel.

"So what am I supposed to do?" John asked her, baffled.

"Patience," she said. They crossed back over the street, but she was sure the butt would still be burning. She said to John, almost casually, "I want you to use the flame in that cigarette to burn the building to the ground."

He gaped at her. "You . . . what?"

"You heard me. It's full of dead bodies - an absolute breeding ground for further infection. Give our fallen brothers and sisters a proper pyre, Pyro."

It was just the kind of inspiring, martial language to appeal to a boy. His jaw firmed and his eyes narrowed. A street behind, she heard a distinctive whoosh, then a loud burst as the (remaining) building windows exploded outward, fueled by extreme heat. She already had a cell phone out (an old one with no GPS) and was calling the fire department. It was a call of barely 30 seconds - no time to trace, even had they thought to. The experts might expect arson, but John's mutant power would leave them with no concrete evidence of it.

Inside a minute, she could hear the far-away scream of fire engines as she and John moved on, circling back towards the building full of sick mutants. "You did well," she said. "You gave our friends a better funeral than anything the city would provide." She'd pulled another cigarette from the pack in her purse and lit it. At this point, she needed it. "But we're not done yet."

"What next?" he asked, encouraged by her praise - proud.

"The next part is why I asked if you could be tough. What we just did? That was the easy half. What comes next isn't easy - but it is necessary."

They'd drawn even with the unofficial infirmary they'd left fifteen minutes ago, and she paused. "Do you know how many mutants have died of this disease already?"

He shook his head.

"If we include not only the official count - now at twenty, I understand - but also the twenty-seven we just cremated, that's almost fifty, John. And it's spreading _faster_. We face a mutant plague - and the mutants here know it. That's why they won't go to the hospital. The first who did were put in isolation, but those who fell ill after - seeing what had happened to their fellows - have gone to ground. And while it's true we can't trust the government, in this case, the choice to hide is endangering other mutants. But the mutants here - they're too selfish and short-sighted to care. They can't be saved, John. They're going to die. Horribly."

Well, from what she'd seen, that wasn't _strictly_ true, but odds were not in anyone's favor. Most of them _would_ die, maybe all of them without the treatment and fluids a hospital could provide.

"This is a terrible disease. Those who contract it suffer from internal hemorrhaging, extreme diarrhea, and retching. Some choke on their own vomit. Others dehydrate in less than a day." Mystique watched John, who listened intently, still unaware quite where she was going. Taking a final drag, she flicked the cigarette near a wooden column holding up the building's ancient awning. It was canvas, and would catch quickly. "Would you want to die like that?" she asked, and obediently, he shook his head. "I didn't think so. Not even a dog should die like that."

She glanced over her shoulder. She could hear the approach of the fire engines; they'd arrive soon at the burning building one block over. Then she turned back to John, holding his eyes a moment, finally glancing aside to the cigarette butt that she'd discarded. "Don't make them suffer, John," she said, and walked away, crossing the street, headed for the subway.

Behind her, John stood for ten breaths before rushing after. "Wait a minute!" he demanded, catching her up. "Did you - do you mean what I _think_ you meant?"

The fire trucks were screaming into Mutieville now. They'd be nearby, able to stop the blaze before it went further than the buildings that had to burn. "John," she said. "Those people aren't going to the hospital, and they _will_ pass on the infection. There's _no hope_ for them. But you - you have the ability to put a stop to that."

"You're asking me to _kill_ them," he hissed.

"Kill them? They're already _dead_. And you didn't seem any too reluctant to kill the police officers who tried to arrest you at Bobby Drake's house."

"Those were flatlines. These are _mutants_."

"Yes, I know. And like I said, they're already dead mutants. I'm asking you to keep them from suffering even more than they already are - and to keep them from giving it to anyone _else_." She glanced sideways at him. She could feel hot wind from the fire a block away, blowing her hair. It was blonde and curly in her current form.

"You're horrible," he said now.

"Am I? You just said yourself that you wouldn't want to die like they will. Am I horrible for suggesting that you save them from that - or are you horrible for refusing?"

He shook his head, grunting in wordless protest. But she could see him thinking about it. She disliked using him this way, but it was an important step in his development, and utterly essential that they slow the spread of this plague. She had no illusions this act would stop it, but anything would help. And if she could help _him_ to feel easier about the necessity, then so be it. "John," she said, letting her voice take on a pleading tone. "Think of that young girl you were talking to. She's already nearing the disease's final stages. By tomorrow morning, she'll be unable to keep down even water, retching convulsively until she tears the lining of her stomach. That bleeding will weaken her further. At the same time, she'll begin to suffer terrible diarrhea - also full of blood. She'll be too weak to move, at the end. Do you _really_ want her to die in a pool of her own vomit, shit, and blood?"

And that did it; she could see both the horror and disgust twist his features. Once again, his jaw firmed and eyes narrowed, and behind them, she heard another whoosh and explosion of glass.

"Make it fast," she said. "They shouldn't suffer any more than absolutely necessary."

She led him away then towards the subway station, and pretended not to notice the wetness in his eyes. Let him weep for them. She'd forgotten how.

* * *

"So right now we're waiting for samples of the virus to grow so we can start sequencing it?"

"So the _CDC _can start sequencing it."

"Yes, yes - we're _all_ working on this thing, Hank."

"Jean, you know they can't know you're involved -"

"I'm aware of that! Believe me, I'm aware of that!" Frustrated, she threw up her hands and stalked about the lab while he watched. He still felt as if he should be pinching himself. If genuinely happy she was alive, he was also hyperconscious of the fortunate chance of it all. No sooner had a complicated, deadly virus appeared on the world stage, threatening a mutant epidemic, than the world's (previous) leading expert on the mutant genome returned from the dead to help unravel the puzzle.

Hollywood couldn't have planned it better.

He also realized how unduly skeptical that sounded. Neither Scott, Warren, nor even Charles appeared to doubt this _was_ Jean. She certainly looked like Jean, talked like Jean, and lost her temper like Jean. But why had she stayed dead for eight months only to resurrect _now_, at the very time the virus had been released? No one else had asked that question, or hadn't thought to ask it, but Hank hadn't been able to _stop_ asking it since the previous evening.

He didn't want to doubt her, but it all seemed very . . . convenient, and Hank, a man of science, was skeptical of convenient serendipity. He wasn't sure there was a connection between Jean's return and the emergence of the virus - or what that connection might be, if it existed - but he wondered.

Now she paced around, picking things up and putting them back down. She was dressed in slacks and a white, darted cotton shirt beneath a lab coat with "Dr. Grey" stitched on the left breast. The lab coat had been hanging in her office, which still had her name on the door. No one had had the heart to remove either, even after so long. "What's the current status of the infected patients?" she was saying.

Shifting a little so he could perch more comfortably on the lab table, he said, "As of this morning when I checked in, there were twenty dead, another likely to die soon, and three recovered - two more since the girl Blink. They're all still in isolation, of course. Oh - and our sole non-mutant case? Turns out Agent Larry Trask was a mutant, after all."

"Three survivors and twenty dead makes crappy odds for the infected," she muttered. Abruptly, she stopped pacing and looked up at him. "I think the best place for me to start is with the DNA of those who've died, and the three survivors - see if I can pinpoint anything that connects those within each groups. How much DNA is sequenced already?"

"None. Right now, the hospital's only run PCRs on patients they weren't _sure_ were mutants - some of whom are still alive. The others, alive or dead, were rather obvious - mostly inhabitants of Mutieville."

She frowned briefly, then shook her head. "Okay, let's get busy with the sequencing. I'll need you either to get me the data or bring me samples to run myself. It may save everyone time if I just run the samples here."

"Jean, I can't turn up mysterious data that doesn't seem to have come from anywhere if I'm going to use it later to support any theories."

"Ahrr!" She literally tore at her hair. "I hate this!" Then she rubbed her forehead. "All right, the simple solution is for you to show up with me at the hospital - say I'm a lab assistant the CDC sent in - and I can pitch in to help. I'll prep the DNA samples myself and run them."

"There's this little problem of restricted access . . . ."

She held up a hand and the air before it vibrated, then she was holding an ID card just like the one he was wearing on a lanyard about his neck.

"You were on TV and in the papers less than a year ago when you spoke before the Senate," he said. "You can't count on people failing to recognize you."

Now, her whole form seemed to _melt_, and when it solidified, it wasn't Jean. "Meet Madelyne Pryor, Hank."

For four seconds, he was simply too stunned to speak. Then he said, "Madelyne Pryor died in Alaska."

"But nobody here knows that, and nobody here will recognize her face. I wore it for almost six weeks; I can wear it again for this."

"Is that . . . right?" he asked.

Jean-Madelyne sighed. "I feel better about borrowing this form than some stranger's who I don't know. Madelyne wouldn't mind, not with lives at stake. She was in the air force because she believed in protecting people."

Yet Hank wondered if Madelyne would have felt the same about protecting mutants? Perhaps it was wrong to assume bigotry of a stranger, but Jean's blithe assumption that her accidental alter ego wouldn't have minded contributing her form to Jean's masquerade as a CDC lab tech bugged him. It created layer upon layer of fabrication, and if he understood Xavier's reasons for keeping Jean's return a secret, he thought the professor had meant she should stay at the mansion. "Can't I just tap one of the lab techs at St. Luke's to run the DNA, then send you the data?"

She eyed him. "Hank, if you were in my shoes, would you sit twiddling your thumbs in the sub-basement?"

And he frowned, because she had a point. "All right - but not today . . . or tomorrow, either." Her mouth opened but he raised one big hand. "Today is mostly over, and when I go back down there, I'll mention I might have someone coming in to help - so they're not surprised. Besides, the CDC isn't likely to fly up a lab tech on the weekend." In point of fact, he hoped the DNA samples could be finished before then so she didn't have to go down there at all. "And don't you think it a good idea to spend some time with Scott, Warren, and your parents? The urgency is real, yes. But so is taking time to settle back in."

Sighing, she crossed her arms and blew upward to stir Madelyne's bright orange-red bangs. "Okay. Point made." Then she shifted again, and it was Jean before him once more. He resisted shaking his head the way one might with an optical illusion.

Whatever expression his face showed, it caused her to smile, and she crossed to give him a bear hug. "Poor Hank. You'll get used to it, maybe faster than anyone else." Then she pulled back to look at him. "Speaking of which, Scott told me about the DNA sequences you ran on all of them, and on the samples I took of myself."

"The data's in the computer."

"Good. I want to look at that." And she wandered off to sit down at the SUN station, despite his admonition of a moment before that she ought to spend time settling in. He wasn't sure if she were just distracted, or if she'd forgotten.

"What about your parents -?"

"We're all having dinner together later, upstairs in my and Scott's suite. I had lunch with the kids and staff earlier." She glanced over her shoulder. "Hank, don't _worry_." She turned back to the monitor, waiting for the machine to boot.

"All right," Hank said, hesitated, then asked, "Have you seen Logan yet?"

He caught the slight stiffening of her spine and lift of her shoulders. "No. He wasn't at lunch. I'm sure I'll run into him eventually." There was a pause while she entered her ID and password, making a rapid clack-clack of keys. "I'm more interested in having dinner with my fiancé, my friend, and my parents than in looking for Wolverine."

"I wasn't implying anything, Jean."

"Then you're the only one in the mansion who hasn't at some point."

"Has someone said something to you since you got -"

"_No. _Logan wasn't in the dining room earlier, and I didn't ask where he was." She hesitated, then added, "I'm not in a hurry to see him, Hank. I'm not sure I want to, though I don't suppose I can avoid it."

Hank walked over to prop himself on a corner of the computer table. "Why not?" She didn't reply, instead clicked through menus with her computer's mouse, not looking at him. "Jean, you can talk to me. I may not be Warren, but -"

"I don't really have answers, but I can't say I liked what I saw of myself in the minds of others, how I acted when Logan was around. But I don't _remember _it. I don't remember how it felt, what _I_ felt. But I _love_ Scott. That, I remember. I remembered it so hard I came back for him." She looked up at Hank finally.

"You're afraid to find out what you felt for Logan, aren't you?"

"Not afraid - I _don't want to. _I've been with Scott over a decade. I'm happy with that; I don't want anything else - any_one_ else."

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

Her face flushed and Hank could all but feel the pinprick of agitated molecules in the air, raising the temperature. Jean's eyes were practically glowing. And Hank was alarmed. He got down off the computer table. "Are you saying you don't think I really love Scott?" she asked.

"No," he replied quietly. "I know you do. But love's complicated sometimes. Jean, calm down." The room temperature was still going up. "What are you doing?"

She seemed to realize then what was happening, and blinked. The room cooled and her eyes were plain brown once more. "Sorry. I guess I give 'hothead' a whole new meaning now." She laughed, and so did he, but it was strained on both sides. "I'll get the hang of it," she said.

"You're going to have to be careful."

"I_ know_. The last thing I want to do is hurt anyone. '_Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief . . . ._'" she trailed off in her recitation of the Hippocratic Oath.

He snorted. "I notice you left out the bit about not having sexual intercourse with anyone in the house."

She grinned at that. "Might be a bit hypocritical, considering."

He plopped himself down on the table corner again. "All right - I get what you're saying. But I also prefer not to have my hair singed when you're ticked off - since you're ticked off a lot." He poked her in the side and she winced away, mostly on reflex, still grinning.

"Scott's good for me - all that control as an example . . . ."

"Except when _he's_ ticked off."

And she burst out laughing. "It's true! But he doesn't blast holes in things."

"Not usually. And as for Logan - I don't think you need to worry about that. The simple fact you can't remember suggests it's not significant, compared to what you feel for Scott."

"Maybe," she said, but seemed slightly troubled as she returned to her computer. Rising, he left her to her work. "I'm headed back to the hospital in half an hour. I probably won't return here till tomorrow night, but I'll keep you up to date."

"All right," she said, distracted by her files.

He glanced back at her before exiting the lab. She was fully absorbed now, chewing on a lock of hair - which was a very Jean gesture. He wondered why Logan hadn't been in the dining hall earlier, and where he was now.

* * *

Logan was on Scott's bike, headed out of Westchester for the Canadian border. Xavier was the only one who knew (yet) of his departure.

He'd made the decision to leave sometime that morning, after Xavier's public announcement of Jean's imminent return. He hadn't, originally, meant to go anywhere, and he'd stuck around to talk to the trainees about Hank's damn virus, just as he'd promised. But then he'd got to thinking, and wasn't sure he wanted to _be_ there when Jean got back. The remembered loss of Mariko was too new - even if seventy years old - for him to stick around and watch Jean re-enter mansion life on the arm of another man. It wasn't that he thought she belonged on his arm, but that didn't make it hurt less.

So he'd packed a bag, grabbed some cash and the fake IDs Xavier had made for him, and headed out. He thought he might have passed Worthington's limo coming in, but wasn't sure.

"How long will you be gone?" Xavier had asked when he'd dropped by the man's office before departing.

"Not that long. Week - maybe less. Need some fresh air."

He'd be back; Westchester was home now. Yet he preferred to approach this in his own way, sideways and circuitous, not be trapped to face the inevitable. Wolverines never were pack animals.

* * *

Warren hadn't expected to be invited to dinner with Jean's parents in Scott and Jean's suite. So when Jean showed up at his door to tell him the food had arrived, only to find him in sweatpants and no shirt, answering email and messages he'd put off while in Alaska, she was aghast. "For heaven's sake, get dressed!" she ordered, slipping under his arm to snatch a nice vest and some slacks from his suitbag, dropping them on his bed while he sputtered about her family time and his backed-up business mail.

She eyed him. "Warren - you _are_ family. Now get dressed." And she left him to it.

At dinner, Jean filled in her parents on all the things Xavier hadn't had time to tell, while Warren and Scott related the dumb luck of finding her. No one made recriminations for Jean's choice at Alkali, or for her decision not to tell her parents immediately that she was back. There was also no talk of weddings. It was as if they'd all conspired subconsciously to play nice, and it made a sharp contrast to that ugly meeting in Xavier's office the previous fall. Not until later did it occur to Warren to wonder if Jean had telepathically managed the mood, but he had no reason to think so, and was reminded again of how easily suspicion could poison friendship.

The Greys finally retired to their own guestroom, but Scott, Jean and Warren were still operating on Alaska-time. Nevertheless, curfew had arrived for the younger kids. "I should go do Roomcheck," Scott said, stretching.

"No need," Jean replied, looking distracted for a moment. "There's still a pool game going in the billiards room in the basement, some older kids are watching movies in the den, and there's a little making out in a library niche" - she grinned at that - "but everyone supposed to be in their rooms is."

Mute, Warren and Scott stared at her. "What?" she asked them. "There's no need to go tramping through the hallways every night - twice - when I can do it faster."

Yet even the professor, who could do telepathic headcounts as easily as Jean, had always allowed Scott his nighttime perambulations. Warren thought it gave Scott a sense of safeguarding the kids, and gave the kids a sense of _being_ safeguarded by the predictable sound of his steps in the hallway. They might plot strategies to escape Scott's dragnet, but really, Warren believed they'd have felt less secure if they couldn't rely on his presence.

Perhaps Scott was thinking the same thing, as he shook his head. "I'll go. They expect it." Jean didn't try to stop him as he headed out the door.

When he was gone, she turned her gaze to Warren. They were still sitting at the portable table that had been carried into the suite's sitting room for their private dinner. It was, Warren realized, the first time they'd been alone together since her resurrection, and Jean lost no time in broaching a difficult topic. "Hank asked, this afternoon, if I'd seen Logan yet. They're all wondering what I'm going to do when I see him again, aren't they? Even Scott."

It was like the start of one of their old phone calls. If Jean could sometimes be frustratingly circumspect, the two of them had developed a history of diving headfirst into conversations. Warren thought she was probably more honest with him than even with Scott, at least about some things. And he was honest back. "Are _you_ wondering what you'll do?"

"Yes. No. I don't - I don't _remember_, War. Like I told Hank, I don't really remember what I felt for Logan, if I felt anything, really. I remember you, I remember Scott - Charles, Hank, my family, of course, even Ro. But not Logan. My only memories of Logan are what I see in other's memories." She paused, tilting her chin. "I don't like what I see, either."

"And you want me to tell you what you felt."

It wasn't a question, but she grinned. "I guess."

"Couldn't you see it in my head?"

"I have, a little." Blushing, she dropped her eyes. "It wasn't intentional, War, but like I told Scott, it's actually harder now for me _not_ to look into minds. And when I first saw you both again, there was so much . . . Everything spilled over and I picked up a lot, all at once."

"I remember you told me that you weren't sure you had any memories left to recover."

Frowning, she admitted, "I do seem to remember some things all on my own. But no, I don't think I'll ever get it all back."

He steepled his hands in front of his mouth and asked the hard question. "Do you not remember Logan because you lost those memories - or because you don't want to remember?"

Her eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"

"You've never been a grand fan of emotional conflict, Jean. Instead, you do what you can to smooth things over. You don't like upsetting people and you don't like hurting people - at least not until you lose your temper. Maybe it's easier to forget Logan than to set all that in motion again."

"You're saying I hurt Scott by what I did."

"And he hurt you. You're not the bitch here. I love Scott, but I know he's not easy to live with at times. We talked, you and I, right before . . . before Alkali."

"Before I died. It's okay to say it, you know." She smiled, a bit impish. "And I . . . remember. But mostly because I saw that in your mind, that we'd talked. I don't remember what was said." Her eyes drifted out of focus a little. "I was unhappy." Then her eyes refocused, sharp like a hawk's. "I turn to you a lot when I'm unhappy or confused, don't I?" She sounded apologetic. It made him smile.

"It's okay. I've done the same with you."

"Scott's my lover, but you're my best friend. That's how this triangle worked before, isn't it?"

"Something like that. I'm yours, you're mine."

"Who's Scott's?"

"No one. Both of us. Charles sometimes. Colleen sometimes. Scott's a hard nut to crack. I don't think he ever tells anyone everything."

"I'm still . . . recovering things. I will be for a while." Warren just nodded, waiting for her to arrange thoughts. "So - Logan?"

"What do _you_ think it was?"

"Warren - don't. Just tell me."

"What if what I thought it was isn't what it was?"

"Disclaimer noted. Spill."

Sighing, Warren dropped his steepled hands to sit up, wings fanning slightly so that her hair stirred. "Okay, the way I figured it, from what you told me back then, is that you were getting frustrated with Scott - frustrated because he wouldn't get married, frustrated because he's not always the most demonstrative person. Then along came Logan, who made you feel pretty and special, and who made it clear he was interested. Way back when, _you_ chased Scott. He didn't chase you. It took shoving from both of us before he made any move. By contrast, Logan wouldn't take 'no' for an answer, the first time he was here. You and Scott were going through - not problems, really, but there was some conflict about where your relationship was headed. Logan showed up in the midst of that."

Her jaw hardened. "I love Scott."

"Of course you do - and did. But you've been sleeping with him for eleven years. The shine wears off after a while. It wore off for me, too. I still love him, but I don't have a crush on him anymore. No relationship stays the same forever."

"And I had a crush on Logan."

"I'm not even sure I'd call it a crush, so much as that you liked being chased."

Her cheeks had paled. "You make me sound _awful_."

"Why? What's wrong with wanting to be wanted?" He sat forward. "Jean - you didn't _do_ anything, okay? Logan came, he chased your ass, you wiggled it a little harder, Scott was suitably jealous, then Logan went away _and you weren't interested in following_. The last conversation we had on the phone you spent the whole time bitching because Scott was still putting off getting married. Logan's name didn't even _come up_."

She sighed out a little, as if relieved of a burden. Then she dropped her eyes and played with the napkin on the table. "What about you? Can you forgive me for coming back?"

He hadn't expected that turn of the conversation, and his face must have shown it. "Jean - honestly, I'd rather have you back than have you _dead_."

"You're allowed to be mad, you know. And just for the record, I'd have wanted Scott with no one more than you."

"We never had sex, Jean -"

"I know - he said so - but I wouldn't have cared if you had." Warren just nodded at that, taking her at face value. Jean went on. "I think maybe some good things happened while I was away, and just because I'm back, it doesn't mean those good things have to disappear. The way it was before wasn't very good. Scott and I, we felt guilty - even after so long - and you felt excluded."

He resisted trying to deny it, and she barreled on. "I think maybe we had it right in the first place, all those years ago. We're a trio, not a pair with one extra. That may not work for most people, but there are exceptions to everything. Maybe we're special, or maybe we're just weird, but none of us were really happy with things the way they were. Scott and I _need_ you, for balance. And you need us. We're better in three than we are in two-plus-one."

She stopped abruptly, her head turning towards the door. "He's back."

The door opened and Scott paused in it, glancing from one of them to the other. Warren wondered what his face showed. "Should my ears be burning?" Scott asked.

Jean smiled sweetly. "Of course. We always talk about you when you're not around." It was just cheeky enough for Scott to eye her, unsure if she were pulling his leg or not.

Still trying to absorb what Jean had said (Had she _really_ just proposed a ménage-à-trois?), Warren kept his face carefully blank. "Whatever," Scott said finally, crossing to the table to pick up empty plates, stacking them on the serving dolly. Warren hadn't even thought to do it, but when he rose to help, Jean just waved a hand so that all the dishes lifted as one, assembling themselves neatly on the dolly in less than a minute, while Scott and Warren watched, astonished.

"I'm better than a busboy," she said.

"Or busgirl," Scott corrected.

"Nitpicker. Do you have to go back out again?"

"Not tonight. Just the oldest ones are still up, and Piotr said he'd see to it that they got to bed."

Abruptly, Warren stood, taking advantage of the disturbance caused by Scott's return. "I'll head back to my room. I've still got a few things to do - some mail to answer - before I hit the sack." And he turned for the door, hoping to get out it before Jean said anything. A nice, quiet exit. Low-key, unremarkable.

Jean let him go. He even made it all the way to his suite door before he heard in his head, _I'm not trying to push you into something, War. Just think about what I said. You know as well as I do that I'm right. The three of us were never meant be separate._

_Society doesn't look kindly on threesomes, Jean, and we don't live in Greenwich Village where it might be regarded as merely eccentric, not immoral and perverse._

_Perversity is in the eye of the beholder._

_And we're all high profile enough to be beheld. Not to mention your fiancé isn't interested in sex with me._

_Sex is the _least_ of it. I'm talking about love, not sex - and you're wrong about Scott, anyway. He's been attracted to you for a long time; he just can't admit it to himself for reasons we both know too well. He needs to get over it, but that'll take time. Meanwhile, we all need to get past this preoccupation we have with conforming._

Warren couldn't formulate a clear mental response to that, but finally said_, Appearances aren't always a bad thing. I ought to know. And the public can be remarkably shallow when it comes to anything shocking or atypical._

_Maybe less than you think. But I'm not concerned with the public, and I didn't mean public appearances. I meant our own self-perception._

_If you want us all to be honest with one another, why are you having this conversation only with me?_

_Because Scott isn't ready yet. You know that._

_I'm not sure _I'm_ ready._

_You're ready. You've known this all along, just as I have - we just didn't want to look at what we knew._

_Why now?_

_Dying gives you a new perspective on things._

And the touch of her mind disappeared from his. Ensconced now in his own room, he peeled off his vest and slacks to collapse on his bed in his underwear. His head was spinning, and he was tired. Tonight, he just wasn't going to think about it.

* * *

**Notes:** Jean is quoting from the old version of the Hippocratic oath, not the modern version - just to be clear. The note about wolverines is true. I've always been bemused by the tendency to make "Wolverine" into "Wolf-erine." The wolverine is a small, strong, cunning, solitary, famously aggressive but protective and territorial member of the _weasel_ family. The wolf is a canine pack animal, also loyal but not aggressive unless hungry or threatened. Don't confuse them; they act _very_ differently - and _Wolverine_ suits Logan far better than "Wolf-erine." Many thanks to Melanie for some corrections on German, and especially Bavarian German.


	26. Personal Journal: Feeling My Way

_**From Scott Summers' Personal Journal:**_

When Warren left, my whole body went weak with a flash flood of anxious adrenaline, which may sound ridiculous as I'd been waiting a week to be alone again with Jean, yet being alone with her scared me to death. This was like that afternoon, over ten years ago in a hotel room in Kavalla, when I'd almost choked on anticipation. We'd both lost our virginity that afternoon (however technical mine had been by that point), but it wasn't sex that unnerved me this evening, or not purely. It had been sex back then, but now, it was _everything_.

I'd suffered mild anxiety attacks off and on the whole time she'd been away bringing Madelyne's life to a close. Without the thin mental thread she'd set between us before she'd left, I don't know that I'd have made it through without breaking down and following her to be sure she didn't disappear on me in a puff of smoke. Once, I'd told Jean I was an eternal singular. That had been before I'd learned to be one of a permanent pair, and such is the folly of love. You know you can lose it, but you commit to it anyway, put your heart and soul in the hands of another. There were days I wished I knew how to _be_ that eternal singular. Life might hurt less.

Right now, though, I felt all shocky with nerves, and kept swallowing. Jean was watching me - _feeling_ me. I could sense her mental touch, and opened to her. I needed, and was afraid to need. Coming over to me, she snuggled into my arms and just held on. We didn't do anything else for a long time. I tried not to think about the body I held because if I did, I thought things like, 'made out of air,' and 'not hers,' and 'not real.' But she _felt_ real. Her skin was firm and warm, her hair soft against the backs of my hands. Part of why her hair sometimes looks lank is that it's very fine, like a child's. I buried my nose in it, suddenly near tears.

"Go ahead," she whispered, "Let go - I've got you." Then she held me tight while I sobbed. We had to sit down after a while because my legs wouldn't hold me up anymore.

When the storm had passed, I was too drained even to think about sex. I just wanted to sleep with her next to me. Sometimes that's all I want, to have another body to hold that doesn't want anything from me except touch. So she led me by the hand into the bedroom and stripped me out of my clothes, then stripped herself (in the normal way, not by melting the clothes off), and we climbed into our bed. She held me until I fell asleep.

I woke again sometime after midnight. My sleep cycle was all screwed up. She was dozing beside me, not really asleep because she woke as soon as I did, raising herself on an elbow so that her mussed hair tumbled over pale shoulders. There was no light in the room except the glow of a yellow summer moon shining in the window. I'd fallen asleep in my glasses, not my goggles, and had to straighten them a little. "Hey handsome," she said, smiling.

"Are you crazy? I haven't shaved since yesterday evening and I think my hair's all sticking up."

Grinning, she smoothed my hair down. "I like your scruffy look."

The words were just banter, but they were also something we might have said a hundred times before, and I needed that familiarity just then, some compass in these new-old waters.

"Kiss me," she pleaded suddenly, and I leaned towards her, but hesitated - why, I wasn't sure. She bent down instead, finishing the connection. Our lips touched. And wasn't that how this relationship had always gone? I'd been the one pursued, not the pursuer.

Yet once committed, I met her kiss with nine months of pent-up emotion. It was all there, balled in my chest and belly, shaking through me like a storm of want. Everything turned suddenly fierce - the kiss, her nails against my back, and my grip on her arms as we rose to a sitting position. I grabbed her hair and pulled while biting at her lips. Normally, I wasn't so rough - rough turned me off, but not now. I wanted to eat her alive, and it scared me. It didn't scare her. She straddled me and came down hard, sliding me inside her with no more prelude than that, and the surprise of it nearly made me come on the spot. For a few seconds, we held still, fused, then she shifted a little and I supported her while she moved on me, slick and quick and panting. It didn't last long, climax spearing me straight through the balls and the base of my spine, shuddering my whole body. She moved up and down a little more, then stopped, resting against me. I wasn't sure if she'd come or not, but didn't feel confident enough to ask. We were both sweaty, and it was only then that I realized we'd made love without a condom. She'd assured me, back in Alaska, that she couldn't catch HIV from me, but it occurred to me now to wonder if she could get pregnant.

We'd both always known - before - that the only way we'd have a baby would be via a test-tube that didn't expose her to my 'viral pet,' as she'd sometimes called it in jest. Yet as we couldn't even seem to get married, we'd never (seriously) discussed having children.

Now, I found myself thinking about it. The proximity of death does that to you - starts you pondering what you're leaving behind as much as what comes next. Till now, the idea of kids had only made me anxious, worried that I might not survive to raise them. After all, I'd _been_ a child left behind, and I already had a mansion full of kids, as it was. They needed to be first with someone, just as I'd needed that once. But now I considered it all from the other side. I'd been bereft when Jean had died, and for the first time, I understood the drive to procreate, to find immortality in the next generation, and to generate life as an expression of love - all those cliched things.

Probably sensing that I'd gone to mental ground, Jean leaned back enough to look at me. "Penny for your thoughts."

I hesitated. "This might be more on the dollar scale."

The corners of her mouth tipped up. "Oh? Spill."

She was still sitting on me with my cock inside her, which made thinking (or at least talking) a little difficult. "We just . . . Uh, no condom."

A tiny frown pierced her brows. "I told you not to worry about that." And she raised herself off me to plop down on the sheets at my side, bare arms around her drawn-up knees.

"I wasn't," I replied, "or not worrying in the same way. But - can you get pregnant now?"

Her eyes widened. "That _is_ a dollar thought. If you're wondering whether we should go crib shopping, don't. But if you're wondering if it's possible - this body is just as real as yours, and it includes a uterus, two ovaries, and the requisite eggs, probably all healthier than the ones I had before. So yes, I can."

I nodded. "I wasn't sure. When you said before that you could keep from getting sick, I didn't know if you, ah - if the body was . . . ."

"Pinch me and I feel it," she said, "tickle me and I'll laugh, fuck me and I'll come." I blushed. "I still eat, and have to go to the bathroom. I'll still menstruate once a month - though really, I could do without that. But it comes with the package, and I'm glad to have the package back."

"But on the plane, you didn't sleep -"

"I slept for four hours yesterday - or Friday, I guess it was now. I wasn't that tired." She paused, then added, "I can push myself past limits, yes. I learned that when I was finding my way back. I can put off hunger for a while, and exhaustion. So I can adjust some things, but I don't know that I could eliminate them - or that I want to. I _like_ having a body again." She licked her lips, then looked down, as if suddenly shy. "So if you want to make a baby together, we can."

"What about you? How do you feel about the idea?"

She reached up to take my glasses off my face. I still flinched a little when she did that, but not as much, and I understood why she might want to see my eyes right now. "I've wanted a baby for a while, Scott. I didn't think you were ready."

"I wasn't."

"Now?"

"I want to hold our daughter. I hope she has red hair."

She rolled up onto her knees and her arms went around my neck. "It could be a boy, you know."

Tilting my chin up to look at her and returning her embrace, I said, "I'll take either, as long as the baby's healthy."

"Well, it'll probably take a few days. I can't ripen an egg that fast - I don't think."

And that - the casual way she said it as if she were talking about dying her hair - brought me to a full mental stop. If I'd made it over the mental hurdle of the idea itself, I wasn't ready to start planning a nursery. But even more unnerving was the idea that she could _make_ herself fertile just by willing it. "Uh - I didn't mean I wanted you to get pregnant right _now_. And not tomorrow, either. For one thing, you have to be back publicly, first. You can't show up five months pregnant after being gone a year, and have people believe the baby's mine."

She pursed her lips, as if irritated by the constraints of necessity, and let my neck go. "From the way you talked, I wasn't sure how soon you wanted to get started."

"Let me get used to the idea before you kill any rabbits, okay?"

"No rabbits have to be sacrificed these days. But don't make me wait till retirement."

"Half a year maybe. Then we can start trying." As much as I felt suddenly anxious to have a child with her, I felt equally reluctant to start. After playing dorm parent for a while, I was under no illusions that parenthood was easy, and we hadn't had to deal with midnight feedings and potty training.

"What are you smiling about?" she asked now. I hadn't even realized I had been.

"Believe it or not, I was thinking about potty training. If I can't housebreak a dog, how can I potty-train a kid?"

Her eyes danced. "Well, actually, I think diapers come first. You know how to put on a diaper?"

"Not a clue."

"I had some practice with Sarah's twins. You'll get the hang of it pretty fast."

And how had I gone from the crippling nerves of earlier that evening to thinking about diapers? Yet it . . . _normalized_ this whole thing as much as it could be normalized. By whatever miracle, Jean was back, and we were talking about starting a family.

"I think Warren would like having a baby to spoil," she said now.

It made me blink, as I hadn't really considered how Warren would fit into the baby picture, and that seemed suddenly selfish. I was less sure than Jean how Warren would take the news. "Let's not say anything to him just yet."

"Why?" The question seemed so innocent.

I resisted shaking my head. "Jean, think - you, me, baby, family . . . Warren's going to feel on the outside of that."

She frowned. "Only if we make him. You're the tactician - think outside the box." I just looked at her, not at all sure what she meant by that. She huffed. "There's no reason why Warren can't take the baby sometimes. Imagine Uncle Warren in a business meeting with a baby in a sling on his chest."

That mental image was just too funny for words. "Spit up on his tie?"

"At the very least. Think he can change a diaper?"

"Probably no better than I can."

"So you'll both learn."

And that was essentially the end of the conversation. We petted and stroked each other a while, then made love again, slower and gentler, and I made certain - this time - that she came. I was feeling my way back into "us," resisting my tendency to over-analyze my feelings. Whatever else she might be now, she was still my Jean, who I loved to distraction. I had to start there, give it time; I was sure the hard, anxious ball in the pit of my stomach would go away eventually.


	27. White King

Warren rose early on Sunday to prepare for a brunch meeting that he'd put off too long, using Alaska as an excuse. But he could put it off no longer, and was up, half-dressed, and headed downstairs by eight o'clock. Already in the main hall, Xavier helped him secure the wing rack. "Thank you," Warren said, rising from his knees to button his shirt atop the rack. "You'll be watching?"

"The whole time."

"She'll be there - you sure she won't feel you?"

The professor smiled slightly. "I think I can manage to hide from a twenty-two-year-old - especially one whose mind I know."

Warren flushed. "Sorry."

"Don't be. I understand your anxiety. But they won't be able to read you beyond what we want them to see."

"They'll be suspicious."

"Of course they will. But we have certain advantages they don't - and I believe your car is here."

Nodding, Warren headed out the door, down the steps, and across the drive to the limo, whose rear door was held open by Aaron Mayfield. Sliding into the back seat, he straightened his tie. "Let's go."

They arrived at the Carlyle Hotel on 76th Street off Fifth Avenue at 9:46, for brunch; Sebastian Shaw had reserved the lower tier of the Dumonet Gallery, where the rich and famous, from John F. Kennedy to Princess Diana, always went for privacy. The wallpaper was exquisite gold and blue with gilded accents, and fresh white flowers graced vases on tables set with white and gold china. Warren was met at the Gallery door by Shaw, who escorted him to their table. The room could seat fifteen, but the guests were fewer in number - Shaw's own court or his associates, including Emma Frost, the White Queen, and Donald Pierce, now White Bishop and Warren's chief rival for the distinction of White King. The guest list also included the unnerving Nathaniel Essex.

Warren was a buck among wolves.

Despite that, brunch was no worse than he'd anticipated. Right off the bat, Shaw asked the question Warren had known was coming** -** Why was he seeking to join the court when he'd never had much time for the club before? - to which he delivered his rehearsed reply. His father thought he ought to step forward and take a more active role in social as well as business affairs. As Shaw wasn't inclined to take him seriously anyway, he accepted Warren's answer at face value.

And so it went. The most unnerving comment came from Essex, whom Shaw had seated on Warren's left. (Shaw was on his right, Emma across the table from him.) "I understand," Essex said, "that you and Dr. Jean Grey dated briefly."

Because it was a statement, not a question - and it had nothing to do with the matter at hand - Warren puzzled over how to respond and, for the first time since he'd arrived, sought the advice of the wizard behind the mental curtain. _Professor?_

_Answer simply and give him no more than necessary._

"When we were in college, yes. It was a long time ago."

"After which," Essex went on, "she turned to your roommate and best friend, Scott Summers."

Warren wasn't the only one confused by Essex's line of questioning. "Is this Dr. Grey a member of the Club?" Henry Leland asked. Essex ignored him, dark eyes on Warren.

"Jean Grey and Scott Summers were a couple, yes," Warren replied.

"Why did they never marry?"

Warren frowned slightly. "I don't know. And I don't see what it has to do with my candidacy for White King."

"Mmm," Essex responded, returning to his meal, and after an uncomfortable pause, normal conversation resumed.

_What on earth was that about? _Warren sent to Xavier.

_I have no idea. Didn't you and Scott tell me that Dr. Essex had seemed uncommonly interested in Jean, last Christmas?_

_Yes, he was. Can you read him now?_

_No. Either Emma Frost is shielding him or he has some natural telepathic skill - rudimentary, but sufficient to block me. I can't penetrate his shields covertly without more focus - which would leave you vulnerable._

_I'd rather you didn't. But by 'rudimentary' telepathic skills, are you suggesting Essex is a mutant himself, Professor?_

There was a pause, then Xavier replied, _Warren - every person at the table with you is a mutant._

_WHAT? _Warren was stunned by this revelation. _Even Sebastian Shaw? I thought he hated mutants?_

_I can't read them all with complete clarity from here - again, not and shield you - but I can sense enough to say that yes, indeed, every one of them is a mutant, including Sebastian Shaw. I believe there is more afoot here than curious stock practices with regard to pharmaceuticals._

_No kidding,_ Warren replied.

* * *

Early on Sunday morning, Ororo was up and in her office off the mansion's rear wing. If there were no formal classes in the summer, that didn't mean she had nothing to do. Scott had been gone for more than a week, and all planning for student activities had landed on her desk. Now, she was preparing notes so she could bring him up to speed later that day.

Through it all, she was trying _not_ to think about Jean.

A light tap on her open door made her look up, and seeing who it was, she smiled. "Please - come in."

Kurt padded across to perch on the chair in front of her desk, handing her tea. "For you,_ mein schönes Fräulein_." With his tail, he unobtrusively pushed the door shut. Smiling, Ro took the tea and they sipped in silence a moment, then Kurt peered at her and asked seriously. "You are not happy, _oder_?"

"Not happy?" The remark caught her by surprise.

"There is a . . . sadness . . . in the eyes." It wasn't a question.

Ro sighed out explosively. "Kurt, don't be silly. Of course I am happy. An old friend is back."

Kurt tapped his cheek. "But the eyes do not lie. And you may be sad and glad at once, _nicht wahr_?"

Ororo tried to glare, but couldn't. A gentleness in Kurt let him get away with stating the most outrageous (and correct) things. Instead, she sighed and tossed down her pen. "Logan left, you know. Even before she arrived, he left again. It is more of the _drama_ that always seems to follow Jean."

"Drama? You are jealous of Logan's attention to _dem Fräulein Doktor_?"

Shaking her head, she said, "No. Well, yes - but no." Kurt's eyebrows climbed almost to his hairline at her equivocating. "It is not that it is Logan, but that . . . " She trailed off and pulled her hair into a ponytail in a frustrated gesture. "When I first arrived here, a decade ago, the drama was Jean, Scott, and Warren. Finally, that resolved. But now Logan has arrived and where is the drama? With Jean again."

"And you wish the Wolverine would look in your direction instead?"

It really did seem absurd, stated so and she dropped her eyes. "Forget I have said anything. I am beginning to sound like my students." She was embarrassed.

But Kurt only shook his head. "Why is it so wrong to wish for notice? Especially for one who is as lovely as her flowers?"

Blushing and laughing at once, Ororo said, "Flatterer." But he only smiled and sipped tea.

A loud buzzing from her phone almost made her spill her own tea, and she set down the cup to pick up the receiver. That buzz wasn't a phone call; it indicated someone was at the front gate, requesting access. "This is Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. How may I help you?"

_"This is Doug Ramsey. I'm here with my U-Haul."_

U-Haul? What on earth . . . ? When she didn't immediately answer - from shock - the voice went on, _"Doug Ramsey, the new math teacher?"_

"Oh, yes - Mr. Ramsey," she replied, relieved to place him at last. But what was he doing here _now_? She shot a glance at Kurt, who only shrugged. "I did not know you were arriving today."

There was a pause on his end, then he said, _"Dr. Xavier didn't tell you?"_

"No, I'm sorry. He did not."

_"Charles said I could move into the mansion this summer if I needed a place to stay. I'd planned to wait till August, but I closed my lease a few weeks early and spoke to Charles last week. But when I tried calling Friday to let you know I was on the way, I kept getting answering machines. No one's called me back since, but I couldn't not move out."_

Oh, good heavens, the poor man. She had a fair idea why he'd gotten only an answering machine on Friday, but this wasn't the best weekend for his arrival. Ororo had no idea what, exactly, he knew already. They'd met only in passing when he'd come to the mansion for an interview earlier that spring. And "in passing" had been literal. She'd been loading kids into the school van for a field trip even as he was pulling up the drive. She barely recalled what he looked like except that he was vaguely blond and rather fresh-faced. Nothing else about him had caught her eye.

Now, she said, "I will buzz you in, Mr. Ramsey. Then I and another staff member" - she gave Kurt a pointed look - "will meet you on the front circle."

"All right. Thank you."

Ororo released the gate lock for him, then tried calling the professor - but the professor didn't seem to be available. She considered calling Scott, then changed her mind. It would be cruel to separate him from Jean this morning for anything less than an emergency. Unfortunately, Hank was already back at the hospital, Logan had left, and the nurse had been politely gotten rid of for the weekend. That left only her, Kurt, and Edna McCoy to settle in the newcomer. She called Edna, then hurried out to the main entrance with Kurt.

By the time they reached the porch, Doug Ramsey's U-Haul was trundling over the little scenic bridge and pulling into the circle. He waved from the driver's side, stopped the truck, and got out even as she and Kurt came down the steps.

Ororo resisted staring. She'd definitely not paid attention, if she'd found him unremarkable before. He had a wonderful, easy smile and a dimple in his chin, but dressed in t-shirt and jeans, he looked more like a student than a teacher. "Mr. Ramsey - may I, ah, welcome you to Xavier's? I'm Ororo Munroe. This is Kurt Wagner." She indicated Kurt, hovering in his usual spot a little behind her right shoulder.

Grinning, Doug shook her hand - then shook Kurt's, too, and without missing a beat. "Thank you, I'm glad to be here," he said - in Swaheli, which took her completely by surprise. Then he added in English, "And please, call me Doug. 'Dr. Ramsey'" (it was, Ororo thought, a gentle correction) "is just for impressing my students."

Ororo felt herself blushing. "Of course." Then, indicating the truck, she asked, "Is there anything that you must retrieve first, or can it wait until we show you to your room?"

"It can wait."

"Very well, then. Please, if you will follow me?" And she backed up towards the porch, Kurt following. He hadn't spoken a word. "You must tell me how you learned Swaheli," she said as they mounted the steps to enter the mansion.

"Pattern recognition seems to be my 'mutant gift,'" he explained. "That includes everything from languages to mathematics, but I've always been fascinated by other cultures. When I was a boy, an uncle gave me his collection of foreign coins and I used to lay them out on my bed, making up stories about the countries they came from. Then I started adding to the collection myself and reading about those places . . . and it snowballed from there. Though at the time, they just called me a 'genius,' not a mutant." His smile turned wry.

Ororo listened with interest as they climbed the grand staircase to meet Edna on the second-floor landing. Children peeked out from behind doors for a glimpse of their new teacher, and a few of the bolder came to introduce themselves. Doug was charming to all, and asked a lot of questions. It was a full twenty minutes before Ororo realized that Kurt had disappeared at some point amid all the bustle and introductions. Some days she wished he wasn't so painfully shy.

"Did you know he was coming?" she asked Edna _sotto voce_, meaning Doug.

"I think I remember Charles saying something," Edna replied in the same soft voice. "But with everything else that's been going on, it completely slipped my mind."

"Does he know about Jean?"

"Not as far as I'm aware."

"Where is the professor?"

"In Cerebro. Warren had a meeting this morning, and I believe Charles is attending as a silent partner."

Ro resisted raising her eyebrows at that. "I suspect that Scott and Jean are asleep, or at least in their room. I hate to disturb them . . . ."

"And you wouldn't mind showing the handsome young man around," Edna concluded with a wink. Ororo blushed once more, but Edna just patted her forearm. "Nothing wrong with that, hon." She started herding away some children while tagging others - Piotr, Bobby, Sam, and Neal - to help Dr. Ramsey unload his truck. For all her New Age sympathies, Edna was a bit old fashioned in some respects, as Jubilee, Rogue, Dani, and Kitty immediately pointed out. _They_ could carry boxes, too - though Ro wondered how much of that had to do with women's lib and how much could be attributed to their new teacher's pretty blue eyes.

In the end, Doug didn't have much to do beyond directing whether to put a box in his future office or his room. "I think you have more books even than Scott," Ororo remarked at one point as they stood in the main hall, drinking coffee and watching kids come and go like a line of ants.

He shrugged. "I like to read. But I'm not sure what to do with the furniture. I didn't realize the room came furnished already."

"We can put the mansion furniture in storage, if you'd prefer your own."

"Are you kidding? For all I care, we could dump mine at the curb. I never got past grad student chic."

She laughed, then asked, "How long have you known you were a mutant?"

"Since last fall."

That took her by surprise. "You didn't know already?"

Frowning, he glanced down at his tennis shoes. "I found out during the Blackout. I was - and wasn't - surprised. I've always been different - graduated high school at fifteen, finished my first college degree at eighteen . . . Last fall, I found out why. When the Blackout hit, I happened to be lecturing. During the first wave, a few students and I dropped to the floor like swatted flies. After a minute or two, the pain passed, and we got up . . . but ten minutes latter, the _rest_ of the class went down. When the truth of everything came out later, I'd made it very public on which side of the mutant/non-mutant divide _I_ fell - in front of an auditorium of 700 calculus students."

"You were fired for being a mutant?" Ororo asked.

"Not fired, no, but not retained, either. The Blackout hit in the middle of my fall review, and I was told that the RPT committee - Retention, Promotion and Tenure - had, and I quote, 'some concerns about the validity of my degree.' They 'feared' I'd had an unfair advantage. See, being a math genius only counts if you're not a _mutant_ math genius. But you're supposed to be awarded a degree based on demonstration of competence in your field of research. I _did_ that. Does it matter where my gift for math came from?"

His lips thinned and his face became hard. "The real truth is that Princeton is on the competitive side for tenure. So they were looking for excuses to avoid potential lawsuits from other assistant professors who might not make the cut. I was advised it'd be better if I didn't attempt a tenure review." He sipped coffee. "I considered fighting it legally, and maybe I should have, but I don't really want to work for a place that doesn't want me."

"So you decided to teach _high school_?" Ororo was a bit bemused by this shift from Princeton University professor to math teacher at a small private school in Westchester.

"Charles called to make an offer, and I was . . . intrigued." He wasn't looking at her, but at his future students. "So I came to see what he was up to here." He glanced at her finally. "I'd rather go where I'm valued for who I am, instead of feeling that I have to apologize for it. It was tiring even before I knew why I'm this way, but at least here, I won't have to pull my punches, so to speak. If there's any upside to being a mutant, it's having an explanation for how I do what I do."

Ororo suppressed a smile. Doug reminded her a little of Warren - an innocent combination of arrogant confidence and humorous self-effacement. "I think you will find that our school has its own set of . . . unique challenges."

"I'm looking forward to it," he replied.

* * *

Jean awoke to a telepathic disturbance - the professor in Cerebro. Never before had she sensed him there, as Cerebro was heavily shielded, but now, she felt it like the pull of the tide.

Rising, she glanced at the clock - a little after 9:30. Scott still slept, and would probably stay asleep for some time if no one woke him. She kissed his cheek and planted a suggestion in his mind to stay under, but in case he woke before she returned, she left a note on her pillow, too, not thinking that their link now made that unnecessary.

It was nice to have a moment alone in their room to reorient herself. Scott had changed little. Her clothes were gone or in storage, but her big oak wardrobe remained - empty now, a symbol of the hole in his life. He'd removed some of her personal effects, but not replaced them, unready yet to surrender her. Even her arrangement of the furniture remained. It was, still, _their_ room. "Stubborn man," she whispered as she walked among their things, her palm passing lightly over this or that fond object. She created clothes for herself as she went.

Exiting their suite, she headed for the elevator to the sub-basement. No one else moved on the third floor, and she sensed that Warren was gone already. In the mansion below, a few students and staff were up, but it was the bright telepathic light of Cerebro that pulled her down, down into the bowels of the mansion.

Stepping off the elevator in the sub-basement, she turned towards Cerebro at the end of the main hallway. It was locked and in use, so she sat down on the cold metal floor outside to wait. It was the first extended time she'd had to herself since her return to this body. Leaning back against the metal wall, she shut her eyes and let her new senses expand out and up.

There was some minor excitement upstairs, but Ororo seemed to have it well in hand. On the third floor, Jean's parents were awake now, moving about quietly in their guestroom. Her mother was crying, but not in sorrow. Scott was still asleep. In the stables, the groom was letting out the mares into their yard and thinking about who needed exercise most when the students arrived for Sunday afternoon rides. Scott, Jean thought, would probably want to go riding later himself.

Pulling her awareness back, she pondered what to do over the next few days. This virus weighed on her much as it weighed on Hank, and she thought it important to get to St. Luke's as soon as she could. Working alone made it easy to think one's self into corners that a few clever questions from colleagues could pull one out of. If she agreed in theory with Xavier that her return must be kept secret for now, that decision had been made before they'd known about the virus, and special circumstances might necessitate changes. She could do a lot more good if she didn't have to do it from hiding.

Cerebro's doors whooshed apart, startling her, and the professor motored out, looking troubled. Jean stood and seeing her there, he asked, "Is something wrong?"

"No. I just felt Cerebro in use," she replied, which seemed to surprise him. "I need to try it."

His frown deepened. "Cerebro isn't a toy, Jean -"

"I know. But I need . . . I could barely use it before. Now, I need to try again."

Still frowning, he leaned forward a little. "Do you think it might wait until after lunch? I am . . . rather tired, and hungry."

That pulled her back to the moment. He did look exhausted, and she frowned, becoming Dr. Grey**:** "You haven't eaten breakfast, have you? I've told you a hundred times, you _must_ take better care of your health or you're going to get really sick." Coming forward, she hugged him. "Go up and get lunch. You don't have to be here for this. I'm not doing anything dangerous."

"Jean," he said, eyeing at her. "As you just said, you've used Cerebro exactly once before. I don't think it safe for you to try without me here to monitor."

"I can handle it."

"I have no doubt you can." He studied her from beneath his brows. "But it's still _safer_ if you're monitored."

"No one was monitoring you," she said, annoyed.

"No one was monitoring me because this was far from my first time."

Sighing out in a gust, she said, "All right. Let's go get some lunch, then we'll come back." He nodded and they moved up the hall together. "Oh, while you were in there, someone arrived at the mansion."

"Who? Is Scott -"

"Ro's handling it. I don't think he knows about me so I left it to her, and Scott's still asleep."

"Do you know who arrived?"

"Doug Ramsey." She tilted her head and smiled faintly. "I think Ro's quite taken by him."

Xavier rubbed his forehead. "Oh dear. With everything else, I completely forgot about the man. I feel terrible."

"Ro's got it covered." She grinned down at him. "Really - we're big boys and girls now."

"Jean." She wasn't sure if he were more amused or more annoyed at her teasing. "But you're correct - I'm afraid he knows nothing of your return." They'd arrived at the elevator and Jean hit the call button as he continued, "I should make him welcome and update him on the current situation."

"As long as you eat lunch while you do it."

"Yes, Doctor."

Arriving on the main floor, the professor greeted Doug Ramsey while Jean crossed to Ro. Gripping her wrist, she said, "Do me a favor. Be sure he eats his lunch? I'm afraid he's going to take Dr. Ramsey on a tour and then hole up in his office with tea for the rest of the afternoon."

"You're not going to lunch?"

"I'll be up later. I need to check a few things in the lab."

Ro nodded. "All right."

Seeing that Xavier was thoroughly occupied, Jean slipped back to the elevator and down to the sub-basement. She knew the professor would be angry, and Scott and Warren as well, but she also knew that she could handle Cerebro. She _needed_ it, in fact.

* * *

Brunch was over, and Warren, his face schooled to conceal his frown, was almost to his waiting car when he felt a mental tap on the shoulder. It wasn't Charles, or Jean, whose minds he knew as well as he knew their voices.

_Don't turn or look about,_ the voice warned.

_All right,_ he thought back, keeping eyes on the front lobby doors at he approached to exit onto the drive circle. _Who are you?_

_Emma._

_**Emma?**_

_I don't have long - I can't risk being detected, but meet me later this week at the Met. It has to look accidental. I know you go there sometimes to think. Be there on Thursday afternoon. I can't give an exact time, but soon after lunch._

_What's this about?_

_Be there on Thursday and you'll find out. _And she was sweeping past him on the right, escorted by Shinobi and Sebastian Shaw and trailed by Nathaniel Essex, headed for the other doors and their own limousine. Warren schooled himself to give them no more than a glance and nod. The three in front did the same, but Essex continued to eye him, smiling faintly. That man gave "sinister" a whole new meaning, Warren thought.

* * *

Kneeling, Jean let Cerebro read her retinal signature, then slipped inside, sealing the door behind her. Only a few people could open that door now, and all of them knew better than to try while she was in here. She respected Charles, but he was being overprotective; Cerebro couldn't hurt her any longer. Marching forward to the control panel at the end of the aisle tongue, she let her fingers caress the board before kneeling once again to lift the helmet and set it on her head.

Then she _reached_ . . .

. . . and felt the familiar dragging pull as Cerebro augmented her telepathy, flinging her outward. Whereas before, she'd been unable to control the tidal wave of minds, now she skidded along the top of the tide. In fact, Cerebro permitted her do what she hadn't been able to since reincarnating - slip completely free of herself. She became again the Lady of the Lake, but without losing Jean Grey in the process. She was the star in the heart of the mansion and that power rolled, slid, slipped, and shivered in her grasp, twisting as if alive. And it _was_ alive. It was _her_ - her real self beyond skin and bones and flesh. She disintegrated her body and rebuilt it, disintegrated and rebuilt it. She was a phoenix, dying a thousand-thousand times, burning to ash and igniting back to life. With her power unleashed, she found it hard to stay enfleshed, as if her soul drove her towards nirvana. All fire and light.

But it wasn't terrible. It was ecstasy.

Freed and wild with it, she laughed.

* * *

One minute, Scott had been sound asleep. The next, he came screaming out of unconsciousness, his very mind on fire.

**"Jean!"**

* * *

In the main hall, Charles finally turned from welcoming his newest staff member. "Jean?" he asked with a frown, peering around.

Ro moved forward. "Jean said I must see to it that you eat lunch," she told him, fondly.

But instead of being amused, he appeared suddenly _terrified_. "Where is Jean?" he asked.

"She went back downstairs -"

"Oh, no," he said, spinning his wheelchair . . . and abruptly seizing even as the entire mansion began to shake.

"What the hell?" Doug Ramsey asked, trying to keep his feet just as Ro was. The children carrying heavy boxes lost their footing, and Kitty fell right through the box she'd dropped.

"What's going on?" Ororo shouted. She could hear someone far away, screaming in agony.

"Jean . . . !" the professor gasped out. "Jean is in Cerebro!"

"Who's Jean?" Doug asked.

But Xavier had squeezed his eyes shut and was mouthing, "Scott, Warren . . . ."

* * *

Jean was dancing in the fire when she felt something tugging at her mind. Irritated by the distraction, she turned her attention to the horsefly, prepared to swat it -

- _**JEAN!**_

It was Scott . . . and Charles, too. And suddenly she felt what they felt - saw and experienced what all of the rest of them in the mansion were experiencing.

She was tearing the place apart. Just by dancing.

Terrified now herself, she reined in her power, redirecting it to repair cracked foundations, shattered interior struts and columns, broken glass, and Jones' broken leg, too, where he'd fallen under a table in the dining hall. It took only an instant as she swept up everything and restored it. She could feel her body again now, trembling all over, but from horror at what she'd done, not effort. Fixing it had taken no more than a thought.

_I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry . . . I didn't know._

Charles' disappointment was even worse than Scott's dismayed fury, and she felt ten years old again. _I shouldn't have done this, should I?_

_I asked you to wait for a reason,_ Charles told her.

_You knew this would happen?_

_I had no idea what would happen, Jean, and I didn't want to frighten you - but yes, I had some concerns. As I told you, Cerebro isn't a toy._

She understood that now. And instead of spinning like a mad dancer, she became the dance, felt her power bend with her in a pull and sweep of telekinetic muscle under telepathic flesh. She _was_ the power, it wasn't her.

_Yes,_ the professor said, _that's it. Don't let it run away with you. Guide it - guide it._

_It's like riding a horse,_ Scott said abruptly. _You don't control it. You both agree where you're going and then it takes you._

_Yes,_ she replied. _Yes, it's a little like that -_

And abruptly, there was another mind's flavor in the mix too. _It's like flying,_ Warren said. _Here - can you feel with me how to fly? Feel what it's like to fly._

They were all three helping her in their own ways, giving her what they could - not pulling away in horror that she might consume them. And she _would_ do this; she _would_ control it. She'd show them that she could be gentle with them. Even Charles, the strongest telepath she'd ever known, felt weak to her now. But _wise_. Power wasn't everything. She needed his guidance, she needed Scott's love, and she needed Warren's faith.

And she could fly.

Coming to herself again, she was no longer wearing the helmet or standing on the bridge. Instead, she hung suspended in the center of Cerebro, arms out - flying. Her wings were flame. _To have freedom,_ she said, quoting Virginia Woolf, _we must control ourselves._

Then she danced again in the big round room, but around and above her, the mansion lay quiet.

* * *

Down in the main hall, Xavier sagged in relief, opening his eyes as Ororo knelt in front of his chair. "Is she - ?"

"She is under control again. Her own control." He didn't add what Ororo could guess - no one _else_ at the mansion had any hope of controlling her.

"Someone want to explain to me what the hell's going on?" Doug snapped. He and Piotr were helping the other students back to their feet. Everyone appeared shaken - and frightened.

"There was a reason that no one was answering the phone on Friday night," Ro told him.

"Indeed," Xavier said, then glanced back at her. "Would you fix some plates and bring them to my office? I'll take Dr. Ramsey there and bring him up to date."

Ororo just nodded, then, looking at Doug, said, "As I warned, our school has its own set of unique challenges."

"I'm . . . starting to see that."

* * *

Jean was in her office in the medlab, trying to figure out what had been done with this or that file and reclaiming her personal space. It was a simple task, one she needed after what had just occurred in Cerebro. She felt Scott's arrival in the sub-basement even before hearing his footstep in the outer lab. "Don't say a word," she warned as he appeared in her doorway, leaning on the lintel with arms crossed.

"I don't think I need to," he replied.

Angry, she spun on him, but he just slouched there and all the fight went out of her. "I didn't know that would happen!" she said.

"Of course not."

"Don't mock me, Scott Summers!"

Almost lazily, he pushed away from the door and walked over. "I'm not."

"I didn't know it would happen! I thought Charles was just afraid I couldn't handle the machine."

"You almost couldn't. You tore the house up - again." His face was serious.

She dropped her eyes. "And I put it back together. And it wasn't because I couldn't handle the machine."

"If that was handling the machine, remind me not to be here when you can't handle it."

Stung, she straightened to spit something back, then sighed. He had a point. "I didn't do it on purpose," she said.

Frustrated, Scott threw up his hands. "I know that! But if I accidentally knock off my glasses and blow out a goddamn wall, that wouldn't be on purpose either - but the ceiling would still come down on people. I'm _careful_, Jean. There are things I don't do because I'm fucking _dangerous_, and yeah, the kids think I'm a tightass, but at least they're alive to think so."

She winced, then pursed her lips. "All right - point noted. I'm just . . . I've got to learn to master this. And they're all scared of me anyway." Abruptly, she tossed a sheaf of papers onto the top of her desk in frustration. "Even Warren and Charles are scared. I think you're the only one who's _not_. You were _angriest_ at me - you still are when you're not suppressing it - but you're not _scared_ of me. Not the same way."

He shrugged. "I know what it is to have people scared of _me_. But I think it's the whole 'coming back from the dead' thing that worries them most. The last person who did that claimed to be the son of God."

She rolled her eyes. "Oh, please. It's still TK, just a little more . . . fundamental. I can manipulate matter, not just shove things around with my mind."

He watched her from behind his mirrored glasses and best poker face. "Have you thought about the implications of what you just said? You can _manipulate matter_. A little caution is in order. I don't think the professor was worried about what Cerebro would do to you. I think he was worried about what you might do in Cerebro." He didn't have to add, "and with good cause."

She looked away and walked over to her desk, moving things around on it. Scott was right, of course. "I know how to handle it now. It was just . . . it's . . . ." She looked up. "It's hard to describe how it feels to be in there."

"I think I've got some idea," he replied, and he probably had. She was tied to him now, and he to her.

"That's why you're not scared of me," she said with sudden insight. "You feel what I'm feeling." He knew her deep-down intentions in a way no one else did, not even Xavier.

"I've never been scared of you," he reminded her. "What you can _do_ scares me, yeah. But _you_ don't." He moved forward a little more until they were nose to nose. "Do you remember, a long time ago, throwing that glass bookend at me?" She blinked at him, unsure what he was talking about. "Back when we were kids - I overheard you talking to Xavier about me. I got mad and accused you of being my friend only because he'd asked you to be, since I couldn't imagine why else you'd want anything to do with me? You got really pissed off and threw the bookend?"

Abruptly, she remembered. He'd been all of sixteen, moody and mercurial, and full of self-hatred. "I remember. You were being an ass."

He grinned. "I was. I was an ass a lot back then. But I realized something that day - you almost brained me with that bookend, but I wasn't _scared_ of you. It was . . . freeing, not to be afraid. I needed someone who could be honest with me - even honestly angry - and not be afraid of that, not be afraid you'd leave me. It's not that you couldn't hurt me. You could've hurt me with that damn glass horse head." He gathered up her hands in his and gripped them. "But _you_ don't scare me, Jean. You and War never gave up on me, even when I was _impossible_ to live with. We won't give up on you now."

She pulled a hand free to wipe her eyes. "God, you're a _sap_, you know it?"

"Shhh - you'll ruin Cyclops's ice-blood reputation." He was smiling, then sobered. "Just next time you go into Cerebro, let the professor go with you, at least till you get the hang of it."

And so she did. Later that same afternoon, she entered Cerebro for a second time. "I need to get back up on the horse," she'd said - and a bit to her surprise, the professor had agreed.

"It was never that I thought you shouldn't attempt Cerebro, Jean," he told her. "But learning to master it is not easy. I can use it seemingly without effort because I and the machine had our wrestling matches years ago."

So Scott and Warren waited outside the doors while she and Charles entered. Warren was trying to pretend he wasn't nervous, but Scott honestly didn't seem to be, or not more than she was.

Inside, she stopped at the end of the tongue, moving aside for the professor to come up next to her. "I don't need the helmet," she told him.

"I noticed," he said, amused.

Then she stretched out her arms and her mind both, experienced that rush and pull - but this time, she pulled back. She neither let the wave take her nor surfed atop it. Instead, she made it turn where she told it, and all around them the room disappeared, leaving a mindscape full of lights that danced like will-o-wisps - bright red mutant minds. "They're so beautiful," she whispered.

"Yes, they are."

She touched them gently, brushing mental fingertips over a field of wildflowers, savoring the petal-softness of them. So bright and delicate, and how careful she must be. She could feel the minds of non-mutants, too, dimmer, paler, but equally precious. She cupped the living stars of her parents, then let them go, slipping past to find her sister Sarah's family, and . . . .

"Gailyn and Joey are mutants!" she said, caught by surprise. They were her sister's twins.

"Yes, they are," the professor responded.

"You've known?"

"Since they were born, but one of the things we must learn, Jean, is when to speak - and when not to speak. When they come of age, we'll be here for them. Until then, and given the current political climate, I'm not sure Sarah is ready to know for certain."

"I can't say I blame her," Jean admitted. She reached further, not seeking anything in particular, just exploring. The professor let her. Yet one of the red lights caught her attention, winking with a strange familiarity, and she turned toward it -

"Careful," Charles said beside her. "Remember what I said, Jean. We must learn when to tell what we know - and when not to."

"You're saying I might find out something I don't want to know if I touch that mind?"

"No, you'll find out something you _do_ want to know, and may have a hard time keeping to yourself."

She reached anyway, caressing the red flicker . . . and reeled back in shock.

"You knew!" she hissed. "You've known the whole damn time haven't you? You've known the whole time and you didn't tell him!"

"It isn't my place."

"Charles, he _trusts_ you!"

"But this is not my business to tell - nor yours."

Jean turned to face her mentor, could feel her temper rising but Charles regarded her calmly and she kept a hold on herself. "I'm not sure I agree with that. This is all he has left!"

"No, he has us. And the choice to contact isn't ours, as difficult and painful as that may be."

"What if . . . what if _he_ doesn't know, either?"

"Oh, he knows, or knows he could find out, but deliberately chose not to pursue it. His prerogative."

"But -"

"No 'buts.' His _prerogative_, Jean."

Unhappy, she let the red light drift out of focus, then the rest of them, too, until the mindscape became a metal room once more. "It feels like a betrayal to know and not tell him."

"And a bigger one, if we did tell, to the one who's chosen his own way. We may not like it, we may not think it fair - but it _isn't our decision_."

Turning, wiping at her wet eyes, Jean stalked out, but she had a hard time facing the two men beyond with a smile. "Are you okay?" Scott asked.

"I'm fine," she lied. Hooking an arm through his and then through Warren's, she said, "Let's go to dinner. I think Mom and Dad are driving back afterward, and I want to see them again, before they go."

* * *

"What if she loses it again and brings the whole house down? We saw what she did when she was just a ghost, and that earthquake this morning? Made me feel like I was back in California."

Jubilee muttered this softly over her spinach salad - just she and Rogue at a table in a rear corner of the dining hall. In general, the mansion mood was subdued in sharp contrast to the day before. "I don't want it to sound like I don't, you know, want her back." Even the usually forthright Jubilee sounded guilty. "But she's _scary_."

"And after what happened with Logan a year ago, it took people a while to stop giving me a foot-wide berth in the hallways," Rogue reminded her. She felt a little sorry for Dr. Grey, despite the fact she'd been jealous of her before, and also despite the fact Dr. Grey's advent had sent Logan back to the road. The professor had assured her his absence was only temporary, and now that he'd come back twice already, Rogue was losing her fear that he'd disappear forever. "A lot of us are scary to the norms out there, and scary to each other when we come here."

"I know," Jubilee replied, frowning. "I'm not saying it's fair, but it is _there_, y'know? And you and I, we were both in Canada. We saw what she did with that wave and the plane."

"She saved us."

"That's why I don't like being scared of her." She looked up at Rogue, black-brown eyes unusually serious. "But I am."

* * *

Dan Moser showed up in the lab on Sunday morning with newspapers. It had become something of a tradition in the past week, bringing in papers to see what was being reported in the press. But today, it wasn't a story about the 'epidemic' that Dan dropped in front of Hank.

**2 Bronx Blazes Kill 41**

"Jesus," Hank muttered, skimming the story quickly. The fires had been in East Tremont, right smack in the middle of Mutieville. Had someone with anti-mutant sympathies set them? Looking up at Dan, he asked, "Arson as backlash?"

"Maybe." Dan seated himself across the bench from Hank and sipped coffee. "But what the papers didn't tell - I got it out of a coroner friend - is that the human remains in one of those buildings were all lying on top of each other like they'd been _stacked_ there." He paused. "My friend thinks they were dead already."

Hank laid the paper down. "Dead already?"

"From my friend's description of what they found in the basement, it sounds like it was being used as a morgue. Otherwise, the building was deserted."

Sitting back in his chair, Hank followed that to the conclusion Dan had obviously already reached. "More casualties from the virus."

"Probably. It's just a guess, but given the data, it sounds like the first building that went up was where they were storing their dead, and the second may have been functioning as a clinic of some kind. They found some evidence that suggested as much, including a scorched stethoscope and a few other medical tools. They're not coming in, Hank. They're holing up in Mutieville, trying to ride it out."

"Dammit." Though Hank couldn't say he was surprised; he'd half-anticipated that this would happen. "So who set the fires?"

"Unknown. Arson hasn't been proven yet, but given the speed of the fires and what was uncovered after, they're highly suspicious. Either someone outside Mutieville found out what was going on and decided to clean up the mess, or someone in Mutieville got scared."

"Bloody cruel, though," Hank muttered. "They could've just called Public Health."

"Scared people do stupid things," Dan agreed. "And while we can't officially raise our fatality count, I think we can unofficially, at least with the 27 bodies stacked in that one building. It's impossible to know how many of the people in the other were actually sick, and whether any of them had recovered. But with the two we lost last night, that brings our total fatality count to 49. We've had one more full recovery, and three likely to recover. Another interesting point - those who're recovering are young. Older mutants aren't faring so well. Mutants tend to run young anyway, but so far, nobody over the age of 20 has made it."

"Any other points of similarity now that we're getting some kind of sample?"

"So far, five of the seven survivors are female, but I don't think we have enough for that to be significant. The most significant thing seems to be the age factor. All of them are under 20 - although there's another young woman who may make it out of the woods, but I can't put her for sure in the 'recovering' column yet. If she does make it, she's 27."

"I'm having all the DNA run," Hank said. "I'd like to take a look at it, and there's a colleague from the CDC who might come in on Monday, to help out with that."

Dan sighed and drummed his fingers on the bench top. "How long until the CDC can finish the DNA on an actual viral sample?"

"Monday - maybe Tuesday. It's top priority, but so are a good half-dozen other things down there."

"The way things are shaping up, you know who I wish we had to help?" Dan asked. "That mutant genetics expert who talked before the Senate last year. I tried locating her, but apparently, she died in the Blackout. Car accident."

"Jean Grey," Hank said carefully - suddenly suspicious. "I knew her."

"You did?" Moser seemed genuinely surprised. "Anyway, we need somebody on this project who knows the mutant genome inside and out like that - which isn't to slight you, Hank."

"I know," Hank said. "I'm a biochemist, not a geneticist." He paused, then added, "There may be someone else I can contact."

"If you know any of Grey's colleagues, get 'em in here."

"I'll see what I can do."

As Hank was leaving the hospital later to head back to the mansion (and talk to Jean), one of the lab techs caught up with him. She was uncommonly pretty and he resisted straightening his tie or running fingers through his hair. He'd learned long ago that women who looked like that weren't interested in men who looked like him. "Dr. McCoy?" she said.

"Yes?" He paused in the parking garage and turned to face her. The sun was going down and the garage was shadowed. No one else was around them.

She lowered her voice. "I overheard you talking with Dr. Moser about the fires in East Tremont."

He eyed her. "And?"

Abruptly, her whole form rippled and he found himself looking into a blue face. "Your theories were right," Mystique said with a small smile. "Truce for long enough to talk?"

Hank resisted either jumping in surprise or yelling for security. "What do you know about it?" he asked instead.

"The police won't find any evidence of arson, but we took care of the problem - since Public Health didn't seem inclined to keep an eye on it themselves."

He felt his stomach turn over. "_You_ set those fires?"

"We made sure they didn't spread the disease further than they have already. But I thought you should know the truth - that bug is still down there. You're going to have to keep an eye on the area."

Hank's revulsion was palpable. "How many of those people might have recovered? Did you even _think_ of that?"

"The people I saw in their little improvised 'clinic' were one step away from being carried over to their 'morgue.' I'd already seen enough here not to bet on any of them making it." Her smile was bitter. "I'm not in the habit of killing fellow mutants without a damn good reason, Dr. McCoy. But I will do what has to be done. Now, you do your part. Figure this thing out before it kills us all." Her form shivered again, and she was the lab tech once more.

"What did you do with the person whose face you're wearing?" he asked - afraid of the answer.

"Who said I was wearing anyone's face but my own?" She snorted at his surprise. "Men never look past the blue and the scales."

Turning, she walked away and he considered attempting to subdue her for the authorities. But after talking to Scott about the fight at the Statue of Liberty, he didn't think he had an ice cube's chance in hell of winning, and he'd never been fond of futile gestures. "Dr. Darkholme!" he called instead. She turned, but kept walking. "Women never look past the hands and the hair, either. And I suggest that you don't return to the hospital. Or I will turn you in."

"Don't worry. I'm finished here." And she turned her back on him again.

Hank had a sudden inspiration. When she'd shifted forms, her lab coat, at least, had seemed to be real. "Hand over the coat and ID, Mystique. You won't be needing them again."

She let the coat slide off her shoulders and tossed it behind her without looking. "Catch, Beast."

* * *

Three times on Sunday, Jean nearly broke down and told Warren what she'd found out, but the fear that he'd side with Xavier kept her silent. Yet Jean didn't buy the professor's reasoning, and the more she thought about it, the angrier she got. So she returned to Cerebro late Sunday night with no one around, locating again that special red light and gently probing the mind behind it. When she left, she was decided on what to do.

She would bring them face to face. If they didn't want to see each other again, they could walk away, but they both had a right to know the full truth. One was living in ignorance, and the other was living a lie. And Jean was going to fix it.

Returning to her suite, she found Scott and Warren in the sitting room with Hank, their faces serious. They all looked up at her when she walked through the door. "What?" she asked.

Hank began, "I had a unexpected run-in today -"

"- with _Mystique_," Scott finished, looking as if he'd swallowed something bad.

"Mystique?" Jean asked, surprised, as Hank handed her a newspaper folded to highlight a particular story.

"Read that," he said. "Those fires weren't accidental." So she read it, then listened, horrified, as Hank related first his conversation with Dan Moser, then the garage confrontation with Mystique that had followed.

"That tears it," she said when he was done. "I'm going with you tomorrow, Hank. Moser even asked for me -"

"Well, in a manner of speaking -" Hank began, but Scott interrupted, "You can't go down there."

"I can't _not_!" she snapped back.

"I have a better idea," Hank interrupted before she and Scott could fall into an argument. Pulling something out of his lab coat pocket, he handed it to her**:** an ID badge for 'Angie Holt,' bearing a picture of a pretty blonde woman. "Mystique won't be needing that anymore."

Jean looked up from the badge. "You want me to take her place?"

"If you can make yourself look like Madelyne Pryor, could you make yourself look like Raven Darkholme? Well, how she'd look, if she weren't blue?" He pointed to the badge.

Jean glanced down again, then closed her eyes, thinking about the time she'd spent with Mystique in Canada. This shouldn't be too hard . . . .

She heard indrawn breaths, and opened her eyes. "Close enough?" she asked.

They all appeared a bit stunned. "That'll do," Hank said with a vague nod.

When Hank and Warren were gone, and she was back to her own form alone with Scott, she said, "Don't make any plans for Friday night."

"Oh?"

"We haven't been on an old-fashioned date in a long time, Mr. Summers. And I know this little Cajun restaurant I want to try."

She didn't tell him it was in Blacksburg, Virginia.


	28. Cracks in the Surface

At birth, she'd been christened Trisha Tilby Euteneuer, but halfway through her college career in broadcast journalism, she'd realized that "Euteneuer" was a bit unwieldy. So she'd recreated herself as plain "Trish Tilby," liking the alliteration, and subsequently built a career on her hard-nosed interviewing style and a natural instinct for a good story.

She'd been following the tale of a possible viral epidemic in the Bronx since she'd gotten a tip the previous Saturday. No one was saying anything, at least officially, but Trish was no fool, and she'd done enough health and medicine-related reporting to recognize when the portcullis had been dropped while the doctors behind it scrambled to figure out what bug was loose in New York. Trish had interviewed the families of some of the victims, plus a janitor from St. Luke's, and a receptionist, too, and was keeping track of blogs. And when two fires broke out in Mutieville, turning up more bodies than such fires usually did (in a supposedly abandoned building, no less), Trish didn't think it an accident.

She'd discovered not just the name of the CDC representative sent up from Atlanta - which even the _Post_ had - but had secured contact information for him as well. Unfortunately, he was staying on gated property at some private prep school up in Westchester where his mother worked, but Trish had learned he did stop regularly at a Westchester coffee shop called "Beans" on Titicus Road west of the reservoir, not long before he got on I-684 down to the city. Stakeouts were useful.

Thus, on Monday morning, Trish and her camera crew were waiting, concealed around the side of the shop. Once her quarry was parked and out of his car, Trish emerged with her microphone at the ready, lights glaring and cameras rolling. He'd walked around to the car's passenger side to speak to someone, but the camera crew got his attention and he straightened, looking startled as if he couldn't imagine why the press was interested in him. Charming, in a naïve way.

"Dr. Henry McCoy?" she asked, and before he could answer, launched in, "This is Trish Tilby with Channel Seven News. What can you tell us about this new Bronx Virus? It attacks only mutants, doesn't it?"

McCoy recovered quickly - and looked enormously annoyed. "Ms. Tilby, as soon as we have anything to report, I assure you, we shall do so. Until then, I have nothing to say."

"So there is a virus?"

Lips pursed, McCoy asked, "Tell me, when did you stop beating your wife?"

Tilby just stared at him. "What?" That comment had made absolutely no sense.

He smiled faintly. "You're posing assumptive questions that will allow you to make your case no matter how I answer them. 'When did you stop beating your wife?' questions." He turned then to face the camera, rather than try to avoid it or become discombobulated by it. "At the present time," he said, "we have no _concrete_ information about the reported illnesses, and personally, I prefer facts to gossip. I assure you, we are just as interested in keeping the population healthy as the population is in staying healthy. To that end, the best advice I can offer would involve drinking more milk, less coffee, giving up smoking, getting sufficient exercise, and being sure to wear a seatbelt. If and when we have information regarding these infections, I'll be sure to pass that on, too."

Trish was staring at the big man. Who was this Henry McCoy and where had he learned to think on his feet like that? But she had a job to do and she'd be damned if she'd let an unprepped interviewee get the bit in his teeth and run. "So would you characterize 'these infections' as a mutant Ebola or more like AIDS?" She was going for a reaction shot.

Unfortunately she didn't get one. "It's a little early for characterizing it 'like' anything," he admonished. "When I can say what it _is_, I'll let you know."

"What are the symptoms? How's it spreading?"

"I don't know that. I wish I did. That's the whole point of an _investigation_ - to find those things out."

"After a week, you don't have any theories?"

"After a week, we've barely got enough data. As another Dr. McCoy once said, 'I'm a doctor, not a miracle worker.'"

Trish blinked. Had he just quoted _Star Trek_? On _purpose_? She tried another tack. "So what about the fires in the Bronx on Saturday? They broke out in the same area as the first reported cases of this disease. Do you think they're anti-mutant hate crimes connected to the epidemic?"

"Epidemic?" His eyebrow went up. "More 'beat your wife' phrasing, Ms. Tilby. I'm not sure if these infections are all the same disease, much less an 'epidemic.' And as to the cause of the fires, I have no idea. The last time I checked, I was a bio-chemist, not an arson specialist."

This interview was just . . . not going the way it was supposed to. He should be flustered, angry, and thus, inclined to give away clues. "But you _are_ working with the police?"

"My job involves investigating the infections, not speculating about fires."

"So the police aren't telling you anything, then?"

He sighed. It was the first sign she'd seen of growing irritation beyond general annoyance. "Everyone in the city is working together on this situation - and we work together best by concentrating on our jobs, not someone else's job."

"All right, doctor, _when_ do you think you'll have something to say to the public? Just how many more mutants have to die before this goes public? Or does the fact that they're mutants mean you don't _want_ it going public?"

Now, he was angry. He hadn't been angry before, but the hard flash in his eyes - that was real anger, and finally getting a rise out of him lifted her spirits a bit. She'd started to fear she was losing her touch. "When I have _useful_ information to share, I will," he said. "This isn't a conspiracy. No one is 'keeping' anything from the public, but it would be _irresponsible_ in the extreme for us to speculate wildly - not to mention that we'd be changing what we had to say every five minutes. Better to wait until we have something concrete. I might suggest that the press do the same. Good day."

And he turned, heading back around to the driver's side. "But Dr. McCoy!" she called, following him, "You're a scientist - you must have _some_ theories!"

"Theories can be _wrong_, Ms. Tilby." He opened his car door and slid in. "I prefer to tell people what, to the best of my knowledge, I know to be correct. Good _day_."

He shut the door, started the car, and drove away. He never had gotten his coffee, and Trish was viciously pleased, considering. "Let's get back to the studio and see what I can splice together that might be useable." Trish wasn't half done with Henry McCoy. She liked a challenge. And he'd quoted _Star Trek_! "You're a piece of work," she muttered under her breath.

* * *

"Don't let it get to you," Jean advised as Hank got back in the car. She was wearing her Raven face now, though she hadn't been when the reporters had descended on them. Fortunately, Hank had been standing in front of her, and the reporters hadn't been focused on her anyway. "Someone was bound to start asking you questions sooner or later. I thought you handled yourself admirably."

He just snorted. "She could at least have waited till I'd gotten my coffee."

Jean smiled at that, then an idea occurred to her. If she could dress herself from thin air, could she make him coffee? Raising a hand, she concentrated until a travel mug built itself in her grip, glowing from the heat of matter conversion, then she filled it with steaming black-bean. Blowing on it to be sure it was cool enough to touch, she handed it to him. "It's a first try, so you'll have to tell me if it's drinkable."

He was attempting to keep his eyes on the road, not gape at the proffered mug. Cautiously, he took it from her and sniffed. "It smells like coffee."

"It _is_ coffee, Hank. I'm not trying to poison you." She grinned. "You can run tests on it if you like, but that'd have to wait for the hospital, and it'll be cold by that point."

Shooting her a look from the corner of his eye, he brought the mug up to his mouth and sipped. "Mmm, not bad. A little on the bitter side, though."

"Everyone's a food critic." She waved her hand. "Try it now."

He did. "Better." A pause, then, "Thanks."

"You're welcome."

They didn't talk again about her newfound TK skills, but Jean was starting to wonder if there was anything she _couldn't_ transform - and that was a direction of inquiry she wasn't prepared to take.

No one looked twice at 'Angie Holt' when she showed up in the lab about the same time as Hank. He'd brought in her PCR primers, which were designed to detect different alleles on the X-gene more quickly. He explained to the others that they'd come from Jean Grey's lab, and he'd been given permission to use them. Then he pretended to explain to her how to run her own tests. Suppressing a cynical smile, she pretended to listen. If anyone thought she picked it all up remarkably fast, they didn't comment. They had other matters on their minds.

Everyone was waiting on word from Atlanta.

Yet by early afternoon, it still hadn't come. Jean, however, had found something worthy of note in her own work. Every survivor shared the set of primers that she'd dubbed 'second-generation' markers. She pulled Hank aside to walk down to the cafeteria together for a late lunch. "I think I may have something," she told him once they'd gotten trays and were seated at a back table near a quintet of med students recounting their on-call adventures loudly enough that Hank and Jean didn't have to worry about being overheard.

"Everyone who's survived so far has what I call a second-generation X-gene. It's a direction I've been going lately with my research - how the X-gene is mutating, or evolving _itself_." She wasn't sure how much of her recent work Hank had read. "It was the basis for that paper I gave at Stockholm, but a lot of what I've been doing hasn't been published yet."

Hank set down his fork. "Can we detect the presence of second-generation genes without using PCR?"

"Not conclusively, but these alleles encode proteins that have high electrophoretic mobility and they tend to be connected to complex mutations, double mutations, or extremely powerful ones. Psionic mutations are somewhat privileged, but only by a 12 percent bias." She paused, then went on, "One thing that's generally true about these alleles' presence is _functionality_. Take Rogue, for instance. Her mutation could be considered counter-evolutionary since it may result in her inability to reproduce . . . and she also doesn't have a second-generation X-gene."

"And the mutants who died?"

"The ones I've tested so far all lacked high electrophoretic mobility alleles, but I'm not done. I've seen enough, though, that I think I may have found our smoking gun. I'll let you know if that changes."

"What impact would this have on survival rates in the general mutant population?"

"Hard to say. Younger mutants are more likely to have the alleles - which matches what Moser already noted. Most of the survivors are young. But I think one reason we've got such a high mortality rate has to do with _where_ this virus began - Mutieville. Many of the mutants living there have mutations that are either primitive, problematic, or counter-evolutionary. As you know, evolution's far from perfect, and mutations can be _unhelpful_ as often as helpful. Since we're in the very early stages of this genome shift, we're going to see a number of these counter-productive mutations. The ironic thing is - from a purely evolutionary point of view - this virus appears to be clearing the gene pool. _If_ I'm right, it's attacking only first-generation X-genes."

"Seems awfully particular."

"Not necessarily. Obviously, we haven't seen the sequence for the virus's genome, but its replication must be triggered by something on the X-gene. Even so, X-genes encoding high electrophoretic mobility proteins - second-generation X-genes - handicap its growth, allowing the immune system of those mutants to beat it off before it overwhelms them. There will be exceptions to every rule, and that's just a theory -"

"- but it makes sense," Hank agreed.

"The upshot of all this," she finished, "is that if and when this virus disseminates into the general population, we're going to see the survival rate go _up_, though I can't really predict by how much."

"I'd like to say that maybe we can contain it and keep it from spreading, but I fear those are pie-in-the-sky hopes."

"Unfortunately, I think you're right." Her expression was glum.

* * *

And sure enough, the latest buzz about the lab when they returned from lunch was news of two new cases that had appeared outside New York - one in Philadelphia and another in Houston, both of them businessmen who'd recently been in the city. "And both of whom," Dan told Hank, "apparently banged a mutant prostitute while here - I don't know if it's the same girl. One's cooperating about information, one's not. It seems the fellow in Houston has a wife and kids, and claims not to be a mutant himself. It's possible, but after Trask, I'm dubious."

"So am I," Hank replied, pinching the bridge of his nose. "But it looks like our cat's out of the bag . . . or the Big Apple, as the case may be."

Late that same afternoon, the faxes and files came through from Atlanta, bearing the virus' genomic sequence. Crosschecks with the sequence databanks had already shown that it was entirely new, with distinct differences from other retroviruses, if still in the lentivirus family. As Hank was head researcher, his bosses at the CDC had told him he could name it. "Legacy" was his choice, recalling a promise he'd made to Artie to honor his dead friend Leech; it was easier to say than "Danny's Disease."

With this new, long-awaited data, they worked on into the night. Jean was intent on finishing PCRs for all mutants who'd contracted the virus so far, while Hank and Dan compared the virus's PCR results with its DNA. Yet the more Hank looked at the sequences, the more questions it raised. "This just isn't _natural_," he said finally, in frustration. And as soon as he'd said it, he realized he was _right_, and beyond mere expression of frustration. "_This isn't natural,_" he said again.

Most of the other lab workers had gone home for the evening. It was just he, Dan, and Jean-Angie. They both glanced over as he spoke. "What do you mean?" Jean asked.

"Well, look at this," he said, clicking through the screens of sequencing data. I thought at first maybe something was just wrong with the tests - it's missing whole chunks of code. Then I realized, the _virus_ is missing those chunks, not the sequencing. It looks like a lentivirus with filovirus glycoprotein genes replacing lentivirus glycoprotein genes, like gp160 - so we've got filovirus surface proteins on a lentivirus. And see here? There are additional filovirus sequences inserted into other parts of the lentivirus genome, with precise deletions to compensate for the differences in size, as well. So it acts like Ebola, not AIDS. None of this is _natural_. I might believe it if it were . . . messier, like a natural hybrid - if that were even possible - but this is too neat, and it's been fixed so it won't mutate much, at least, not immediately."

He looked across at them. "It's bloody beautiful engineering. But it _is_ engineered."

"Damn," Dan muttered. "Who the hell would do something like this?"

"Someone who doesn't like mutants," Jean-Angie said. "Has the CDC figured this out?"

"I'm sure they have by now. They sent us the sequences as soon as they had them, but they're looking at it all, too. As soon as you have the sequences to compare to the database information, it's obvious."

She rolled her chair across so she could see the sequencing data, long lines of four letters ATGC representing the different nucleotides. "Now that, there - that viral sequence? That's almost exactly the same one as the recognition site where the X-gene transcription factor binds to DNA and turns on the genes that cause mutant phenotypes. And that? That's why it's hitting people harder who carry the first-generation X-gene. The sequence has been engineered so the second-generation X-gene won't bind as efficiently to the integrated viral DNA, so the virus can't grow as well and that makes it less virulent. That also means we'll see a difference in onset from the time of infection. The slower the onset, the greater a person's chance that their immune system can contain the virus and they'll survive."

Too late, Hank realized that Dan was staring at Jean-Angie as if he'd never seen her before. She wasn't talking like a lab tech, not to mention she was still around, long after everyone else had gone home. "Who are you?" he asked.

Jean and Hank looked at each other. _Well, should we tell him? _she sent, _Or should I wipe his memory?_

Hank wasn't sure whether he found her question more innocent or more horrifying. And yet the professor wiped memories from time to time when necessary_. I think we should just tell him, then see how he reacts._

So Jean turned her back and the short, curly blonde hair grew longer, darkening to auburn. (Hank was glad she'd realized it was a bit _disturbing_ to see her melt her own flesh and form.) When she turned back, Dan Moser's jaw dropped open.

"You said you'd really like to have Jean Grey's input," Hank said. "Well - we've got it."

"But you're supposed to be dead!" Dan said. "And how did you _do_ that?"

"It's a long story," Jean told him, expression wry. She gave an abbreviated version, leaving out her time as Madelyne Pryor, and the X-Men. Moser seemed torn between utter fascination and guarded suspicion, but he agreed to keep their secret, and Jean seemed content with that. Hank supposed she'd know if Dan were lying, though he wasn't sure how Xavier would react when he discovered someone outside the mansion knew the truth.

* * *

Jean and Hank had alerted Scott about Hank's interview earlier that day, and as they doubted they'd be home at any reasonable hour, they'd asked him to tape the Channel 7 News to see what kind of hay Trish Tilby had made of Hank. Somehow, word of this got around, and curious students began crowding the den for a glimpse of one of their own on TV. Ororo sat among them, tucked in a corner of the couch with Kurt perched comfortably on its arm.

This wasn't how she or Scott would have wanted the children to find out about the virus, though it didn't look as if there'd be much choice. Thus, before the news came on - and with permission from Xavier - Scott gathered _all_ the students together, even those who hadn't intended to listen to the broadcast. There, in his first 'official' act as new headmaster (beyond hiring new staff), he told them about the disease. Xavier was present, but very deliberately stayed to the side and let Scott take front and center. "You are now headmaster," he'd said when Scott had offered to defer earlier. "I haven't changed my mind about that, even with Jean back."

"Gee, thanks."

Xavier had smiled faintly, as had Ororo. She thought her friend more than ready for the responsibility.

So Scott faced their students and told them a new virus was attacking mutants. Predictably, this generated a lot of questions, but on Xavier's advice, he'd timed his announcement _just_ before the news broadcast, so the questions had to wait. It would allow things to settle down a bit.

Trish Tilby's story aired about ten minutes in, and Ororo didn't find it as bad as Hank had feared. It was clear that Tilby had edited her tape, but she seemed to have been fair about it - which was more than Ororo could say for a lot of TV reporters. Tilby had even left in Hank's admonition to the press to be patient, though she'd added some concluding remarks, calling for rapid disclosure from the medical community, "Before more people fall victim to this terrible epidemic."

"Epidemic?" came several voices on the heels of that. "You didn't say it was an epidemic, Mr. Summers!"

Coming forward again, Scott hit the TV off button, saying, "I didn't because it's not, yet. Real confirmation that this is even something new came only today - this afternoon, in fact, _after_ Dr. McCoy was interviewed this morning. The only reason I even know it is because Dr. Grey told me. The news media likes to blow things out of proportion."

"Dr. Grey's involved?" and "I wondered why we hadn't seen her today," came from the kids on the floor, chairs, and couches.

"Yes, Dr. Grey went to St. Luke's this morning with Dr. McCoy. It's not public knowledge, obviously, but she's there." He gave what Ororo recognized as his coach's smile, meant to be encouraging. "We have the world's leading expert on the mutant genome and one of the smartest people I've ever met working on this. You don't get much better than that."

"When will they find a cure?" Terry asked, cutting to the chase.

"That, no one can say," Scott replied, but he didn't tell them what Hank had told the adults the other night - that it would likely be some time before there was a vaccine, if one ever could be developed. "Right now, the best advice is to avoid situations where you might catch it. At least now that we know what it is, we can say a little more about how to do that.

"I'm sure Dr. McCoy will want to talk to all of you himself, but I can pass on a few things that Dr. Grey told me. This virus is what's called a 'lentivirus,' which means it's a relative of AIDS." That got a few indrawn breaths, but he held up a hand and went on, "Believe it or not, that's good news, on one level. All lentiviruses are fragile - they're not airborn, and die rapidly outside their human host. Just like AIDS, this virus can only be passed via body fluids. You _can't_ catch it just from being in the same room with another person who has it, or even by touching them.

"But the virus's first symptoms are like a flu - sneezing, coughing, that kind of thing. So don't let people cough or sneeze on you. If they do, go wash your hands and skin _immediately_."

Ro noticed that he'd passed over the nastier symptoms of vomiting, diarrhea, or hemorrhaging. While she wasn't, generally, fond of sugar-coating the truth, the wide eyes trained on him now suggested a little amelioration wasn't a bad idea. They'd hear the rest soon enough.

"Now, there's no reason to assume anyone in the mansion has been exposed to infection, but just in case, should _any_ of you start sneezing or coughing, report to the medlab _immediately_. Also, as a general precaution, don't leave Kleenexes lying around, use your own toothbrushes, and if you get cut, put bandages or anything else with blood on it in plastic baggies. Obviously, don't touch anyone's blood but your own, and while it sounds nasty - folks, _don't_ pick your noses and rub snot on the furniture." That elicited the groans one would expect, but also lightened the mood by his frankness. "Be sure your bathroom trash bins have plastic bags in them, and throw those bags _away_ on trash day, don't just empty them - and don't go digging in them for anything, either."

"Ewww!" greeted that, too, yet Ororo was impressed by Scott's knowledge of proper AIDS-preventive hygiene. Then she recalled what Mystique had told her months before and reconsidered. It had never occurred to her to wonder if his knowledge might be personal rather than intellectual, and once again, she was blindsided by what she knew about him that he didn't know she knew. It made her frown down at her hands.

"What's going on?" someone whispered in her ear, and she turned to find Warren. He must have slipped in while Scott was talking.

"Henry was 'ambushed' this morning by a reporter," she whispered back. "He was on the news. And information arrived today from Atlanta, so Scott is telling the students about the virus."

"Ah," he replied, kneeling down behind the couch, arms folded on the back between she and Kurt. He watched Scott. "He's pretty good at this, isn't he?"

Ororo shot him an amused glance. "And you are not the least biased."

"I'm not," he replied.

"Not at all, no."

Warren elbowed her playfully and Kurt watched them with a bemused but not hostile expression. She wondered what her very-Catholic friend thought of her teasing Warren about his one-time crush on a member of the same sex. She and Warren had known one another long enough to be perfectly comfortable with it, but Kurt was different.

Yet he didn't seem troubled, and they returned their attention to Scott's handling of the question-and-answer session. Warren was right; he was rather good at it.

Somewhere in the middle, Doug Ramsey ambled in to lean up against a doorjamb. Ororo tried to pretend she hadn't noticed.

"Who's that?" Warren asked.

"The new math teacher," Kurt said. "You did not meet him yesterday?"

"I was a little _distracted_ yesterday. Introduce me later?" Warren asked, and Ororo turned in time to see him give Doug a once-over, which left her feeling slightly _jealous_.

After Scott was finished, the students broke up into little groups, discussing, while Kurt escorted Warren over to introduce him to Doug. Ororo abruptly decided that she'd put this off long enough, and approaching Scott, she asked, "Could I have a word with you in private?"

"Yeah, sure," he said. "I was thinking about heading to the stables. The sun's still up enough for a short ride." She noticed, then, that he was already wearing his riding boots and must have planned this earlier as an escape from fielding questions all evening. "Walk with me?"

So Scott alerted Warren to where he was going, and they headed out, talking of inconsequentials on the way. The stable was deserted, the groom having gone home for the day and the students all back at the mansion. Scott collected Farolisa's tack while Ororo fed the mare 'horse cookies' - little oat treats. She didn't like riding such big animals, but had gotten past her fear of their teeth. As Scott approached, she said, "They have very gentle lips for such large mouths."

"Like velvet," he said. "A horse's lips and nose are like velvet. I know it's a cliché, but it's true."

And with him there, the mare immediately shifted her attention from Ororo to her Person. She knew she was going out, and became restless. He opened her stall to let her into the main stable aisle, leading her to the tacking station. As he set about putting all the very confusing, far-too-many hooks, leads, and straps equipment on her, he asked, voice deliberately casual, "Did you want to talk to me about Jean?" He wasn't looking at her.

Ah, he must think she wanted to discuss the events of the day before, and while she couldn't say she had no reservations, Jean wasn't on her mind. "In truth, I wished to talk to you about you."

That got his attention, and he halted in putting on Lisa's bridle. "About me? What about me?"

Frowning down at her hands, she said, "I have no wish to pry, Scott. We have always respected one another's boundaries. Yet some months ago, I was told something about you. I kept it to myself as you had not confided this information to me, and I thought that - had you wanted me to know - you would have told me. But I realized tonight that I am . . . no longer comfortable knowing this without you realizing that I know." She looked up at him finally. Glasses or no glasses, his face was completely blank. "Besides, it seemed fair simply to ask you, in case it was untrue."

"What?" There was a multitude of things compressed into that one syllable.

"When Mystique was here, she told me that before you came to the mansion, you spent time on the street as a prostitute, not a con artist and thief."

Now he did react, but only to return to bridling his horse. To anyone who knew him less well, he would have seemed very calm, but she could see how tight his jaw was, and he swallowed before he answered. "Would it matter if I was?"

"No," she said, but then shook her head. "And that is a lie. Yes, it would - but not in the way you fear."

He stopped again (to Farolisa's confusion; she was trying to nudge his shoulder) and looked back at her. "I _was_ a con artist and a thief. I didn't lie to you about that. It just wasn't everything I did out there. I had to survive, Ro -"

"- I am _not_ judging you. I have no right."

At that, he seemed to relax a little. "It was a long time ago. I've dealt with it." Giving into Lisa's insistent head-butting, he went back to his work tacking her. Not sure what else to say, Ororo simply watched. Neither was self-revelatory by personality, and normally, she appreciated the chance simply to be quiet in Scott's company. But this silence wasn't comfortable.

Finally, finished with the bridle, saddle cloth, and even the saddle, he paused to play with the reins in his hands. "Is there anything more you wanted to know?"

"No. If you ever wish to talk, I would be willing to listen, but I was not idly curious. Mostly, I was uncomfortable knowing a secret about you that you did not know I knew - and without finding out whether Mystique had told me the truth."

He nodded once. "Thanks," then he paused, still clearly disconcerted, and asked, "What did you mean, that it mattered, but not like I thought?"

Feeling a bit silly just standing there in the center of the aisle, she leaned up against a feed barrel. "I am well aware of the assumptions made about men - or boys - who hustle. I am also aware that they _are_ assumptions. We do what we must to survive - _you_ taught me that, Scott. You taught me not to be ashamed, and that I was more than what necessity had made me. Yet I said it made a difference because it explains some things that I have sometimes wondered about you."

He was still tense. "How's that?"

"You have always treated me as an equal. When we are in the field, you do not try to 'protect' me unnecessarily."

He grinned. "If I did, you'd kick my ass."

Her eyebrow flickered in shared amusement. "True. Nonetheless, I . . . appreciate that awareness." She was struggling to find the words she wanted, to get this across to him, but not insult him in the process. "Now I believe I know from where it comes - you understand what it is to be patronized, and dislike it with equal intensity. That is something I can trust. It is _honest_, not . . . politically correct."

It clearly wasn't a connection he'd made before, given the surprise washing his face, and she held her breath, in case he took offense. Instead, he laughed. "I guess that's true." He glanced away, then back at her. "All my friends have usually been women. Except Warren. And Hank. Even my horse is a mare." He stroked Lisa's forelock.

"But Warren is bisexual. And Hank is . . . Hank."

Scott grinned at that. "Hank is Hank. But Warren being bisexual isn't necessarily an easy thing."

"Warren's attraction to _you_ may not be an easy thing, but I think you are more comfortable with _Warren_ than you are with _Logan_ - and not only because of Jean. As I recall," she added with a teasing edge, "you and Logan disliked each other on sight."

He snorted. "True enough. But I've gotten used to Logan."

"Yet men - and boys - like him . . . ." She trailed off.

"I'm not comfortable with men period," he admitted. "There are obvious exceptions, but it takes time. Trust isn't my default reaction."

She nodded. "I gathered that years ago, but now, I understand _why_. Again, as I said, knowing makes a difference - but not necessarily a negative one. It helps me to understand you better." She paused, then added, "Thank you."

"For what?"

"Answering honestly."

He shrugged and mounted Lisa, who'd been shifting, impatient. "It's not that I really mind you knowing - you, especially - but it's kind of awkward to talk about. There's no easy way to bring it up without sounding horrible**:** 'I was a teenaged prostitute.'" He snorted again. "See?" He walked Lisa closer to her. "Like I said, it was a long time ago - fourteen years this September that I left that life. I've been to therapy, talked to counselors - it really isn't something I think about much anymore, unless there's a reason. We _can_ get past the past. Mostly."

"I know," she said, smiling up at him and feeling better, a knot undone inside her. "You and I are both proof of that, I think." Sobering, she said, "I admire you, Scott. I thought you should know that." Then she patted Lisa, who was stamping and shaking her head to jingle her bridle. "Now, go ride your white girlfriend before she becomes too jealous to forgive me."

Clucking to the mare, he and the horse set off down the aisle at a brisk walk, leaving Ororo by herself. She headed out after, nearly clearing her skin when she turned the barn corner only to run into Warren slouching there, clearly waiting. "You! You were . . . ."

"I heard; I'm glad he leveled with you finally."

"So you know?" She shouldn't have been surprised by that.

"Scott was here only three months before I came."

"If I may - who else knows?"

"Xavier, of course. Hank, and Jean." He eyed her. "You're okay with it?"

"Yes, I am okay with it." She frowned down at the dirt and grass. "Mystique knows, as well. She told me."

"Fuck. She must know because Erik Lehnsherr told her. Erik found Scott."

"So she said."

Warren snorted. "I just bet she did. And Scott hates Erik for a damn good reason."

"I have gathered that, as well."

* * *

Essex had what Sebastian Shaw considered to be an unhealthy fascination with all media reports on his virus. He collected them, like a serial killer's trophies. Shaw was coming to regret having the man as a guest in his house, though it had allowed him to keep a close watch on Essex, and the Shaw mansion was certainly large enough. Shaw usually tried to avoid Essex if he didn't need him for something, but this evening, Essex was in the drawing room, flicking through the local news reports and taping them, when Shaw entered for a brandy decanter. An interview with Henry McCoy came on one station, and Shaw glanced up. Essex watched a moment, then grew uncommonly agitated, leaping up to cross to the television, where he stared intently at the glass screen for several moments.

When the interview was over, he did (for him) a surprising thing. Instead of seeking more news, he rewound the McCoy interview and watched it again - five times, all the while muttering to himself. Shaw couldn't make out what he said, and Essex didn't seem to care that anyone else was in the room. It was just such singular focus that Shaw found so disconcerting about the man. As one continually aware of others' awareness of him, Shaw didn't know what to make of Nathaniel Essex's hermit-like insularity.

Almost, Shaw asked Essex what had caught his eye as Essex removed the tape and headed out, but then shrugged and let him go. If he spent time worrying over Essex's many and varied peculiarities, he'd never get anything useful done.

* * *

When Ororo left, Warren went in to saddle the horse he boarded there, a Tobiano Priesian - a cross between a black Friesian and a pinto Saddlebred that had produced a black-and-white paint with a Friesian's tempermant, paces, and mane. Warren had come to prefer more predictable warmbloods to fiery hotbloods like Scott's little mare. For one thing, they had less tendency to shy at his wings. But the truth was, Warren had seen this horse advertised, and had simply had to have him. Not because he was expensive (Scott's Spanish Andalusian had cost three times as much), but because he was beautiful and unusual, and Warren had a penchant for both things.

Now, he tacked the gelding and swung up into the saddle, taking him out after Scott, who'd gone through the orchard on the short trail. Hearing him coming, Scott pulled up Lisa to wait beyond the trees. Still at the height of summer, everything was viridescent, the setting sun casting a golden sheen over the squat apple trees with their branches choked by small green apples. Warren drew even with Scott. "Jean coming back tonight?"

"I doubt it. Anytime I 'ping' her telepathically I get back a 'Later.'" Scott snorted. "You'd think a link would be useful for something besides being put on hold."

Warren laughed. "She has a new puzzle. She'll come up for air eventually."

And it was nice to walk their horses and talk about Jean as if she were no different than she'd always been. "How are you?" Warren asked.

Scott shot him a look. "I'm all right. We're all right."

"After yesterday?"

"After yesterday. Don't be scared of her - she's worried about that."

"Scott, you saw what happened to the house -"

"- and you remember what I did to the den, three people, and a good portion of the second story thirteen years ago. At least she fixed it - and didn't kill anyone."

"Those men were scum; they would've killed us."

"Doesn't make them less dead - and by me. You've never killed anyone, Warren."

Annoyed, he replied, "Don't start that; it's a fucking weird way to put me in my place."

"I wasn't trying -"

"Yes, you were. And you didn't wreck the den on purpose."

"Neither did Jean. What happened in Cerebro was an accident."

"Scott, she went _into_ Cerebro knowing Xavier didn't want her to. She didn't think it mattered."

"She made a _mistake_." Scott pulled up Lisa and half turned on the trail to face Warren. "What the fuck is wrong with you? We've all made mistakes, including stupid ones we should've known better than to try." They glared at each other and Warren felt his stomach roil. "I know what it is to be deadly, War, and to pray to God _every_ _fucking day_ that I don't hurt someone by accident. I didn't ask to be this way and you don't blame me. She didn't ask either. Give her a break, okay?" Turning Lisa, he clapped his heels to the horse's sides, heading back up the trail towards the barn.

That night for the first time in months, they both slept under the same roof, but not in the same bed, even if Jean wasn't there.

* * *

Jean became aware of Scott's unhappiness late the same evening as her revelation to Dan Moser. She'd taken a bathroom break, then went to get coffee from the vending machines because the cafeteria was closed for the night. While down there, away from the intense concentration required for her work, the red pulse of Scott's mood slipped across their link to her. Sitting down in a steel blue chair in a waiting area, she closed her eyes and reached out to him. _What's wrong?_

His momentary surprise washed over her, but it was brief. They'd grown used to communicating this way (if not quite so far apart) in Anchorage, and now, he handed over memories of his earlier fight with Warren. It merely confirmed what she'd gathered already, and she struggled not to feel blindsided by Warren's doubts. Yet she could be more understanding, ironically, _because_ it was personal. _Scott, hon, his fears aren't unreasonable, even if I'd like to think they're unfounded._

_He knows you as well as I do. But he doesn't trust you?_

_It's not a matter of trust entirely; it's a lot of things, including feeling shut out again. Even if he doesn't _want _to feel that way, he still feels it. Take this link - we have one, but I don't have one with him. I can remedy that, though, if he's willing._

And she could _feel_ Scott's resistance to the idea, though he didn't vocalize it and tried to suppress it - yet it made her sigh. This was the heart of the problem, all this unacknowledged jealousy. Warren was jealous of her, and Scott was jealous of Warren. Jean liked to think she wasn't jealous of either, the curse of telepathy being to understand the fears and insecurities of others. Nonetheless, all of them had been ducking the fundamental reality. They were Three. They'd always been Three - a mutant triumvirate, and the sooner they started acting like it, the less they'd continue to wound one another.

_Listen,_ she sent to Scott now, _you're not really mad at Warren - you're miserable. And so's he. Would you please go talk to him?_

_Aren't you furious?_

_Why? Because he has doubts? Yes, on one level, it hurts. But you know damn well the_ real _problem isn't about me, Scott. It's about you. We've been ignoring this, suppressing it for years. It's time to stop. Warren loves you . . . just as much as I do. Warren and I love each other - but it's different. It always has been. I told you before, I wasn't angry that you turned to Warren when I was gone. I was happy. Scott, I can _share_ you. It doesn't have to be a competition. Really, it never was. It's society that sets it up that way, but it's not. We can_ both _love you. We both already do. And you love us. Just . . . let it_ be_, dammit._

There was no immediate mental reply to that. Finally, he said, _Jean, it's not that easy. It'd be nice if it was . . . but it's not. And it's not because of my past. I do love him, but what he feels - or really, felt - for me isn't the same as what I feel for him. I'm not suppressing. It's just not_ there. _It's not in me. _He paused, then added, _Warren knows that - he's okay with it, or as okay as he can be. Don't push it._

She didn't believe him, not for a minute. It had everything to do with his past, whatever he said. But he wasn't ready to listen to her right now. _All right, fine. But don't leave this argument between you. Go talk to him._

Another pause, a hesitation, then, _Maybe. Don't _push_, Jean._

It was the best she was going to get from him right now, so she broke their contact, but she wasn't leaving it there. Despite the fact she didn't have a link with Warren, her link to Scott anchored her, and she reached out from that, like a swimmer with her eyes shut, playing Marco Polo, listening and _feeling_ in the wash of minds for the other whom she loved best in the world. She guessed he'd be nearby.

And he was. Almost as soon as she tap-tapped on his mental shoulder, he answered, _I wondered when you'd show up. _His signature was fuzzy with pain and alcohol. _Come to play peacemaker?_

_You're mean when you're drunk, War. _It was more blunt than sympathetic.

_I assume you've heard the whole story from Scott?_

_I'm not here to berate you. He's protective._

_You scare me. _He was sloshed enough to be honest. But a brutal honesty had always been their saving grace.

_Sometimes, now, _I _scare me,_ she replied, and felt that give him pause. _But when I was in Cerebro yesterday, taking the house apart, you barreled in there with Scott and Charles to stop me. You weren't afraid then._

_You needed me._

_Yes, and you were there like you always have been. And we both know what you're really scared of isn't me, or not my powers. You're afraid of losing _us_ again. We drifted apart before; that should never have happened, and I won't see it happen now. Like I said the other night, we belong together. All three of us._

She could feel him moving almost violently around his suite. _And you're fucking out of your mind! What you're suggesting isn't_ possible, _Jean, not being who we are. I know what it is to keep secrets - I struggle_ all _the damn time with the fucking wings. And Scott's headmaster now of a ritzy private school whose best protection is_ not _stirring up attention. And you - you're the face on mutant rights, or will be, when you come back. People like us . . . we can't_ afford _to be a public scandal!_

_Who says we would be? Who has to know?_

_These things have a way of coming out! Dammit, Jean, quit being a romantic idiot! We do not live in Oz. We live in the big, bad, cutthroat reality of New York society._

_Where secrets have been kept before. Even public secrets._

_Maybe in a bygone era. The modern world has paparazzi and the Internet. And some secrets are more socially acceptable than others. I could have a wife and three mistresses, and no one would give a damn, but if I'm sleeping with a respectable, married couple -_

_- we've _never_ been that, War. There's no ring on my finger. I doubt there ever will be. I'm getting used to it._

_Still. You know just as well as I do how tongues would wag. And all that flat_ ignores _the fact Scott would never go for it._

_You might be surprised._

_No, I wouldn't be._

_You're an exception to him._

_But I_ shouldn't _be. Do you want to screw him up again? He's not there yet!_

_He loves you._

_And I love him - which is why the answer is_ no.

And with that, she felt him shut his mind. She could have kept on talking, but she respected the barrier. "So much for making peace," she muttered. Now they were _all_ annoyed with one another.

* * *

Frustrated after his telepathic conversation with Jean, Warren needed another drink, so he headed downstairs. It was almost midnight, and he padded out in just his pajama bottoms, no shirt. At this hour, he didn't really expect to run into anyone, and so was surprised when he found the light already on in the staff kitchen and Bobby Drake there, eating ice cream. Since when did the kids eat in the staff room? Bobby glanced around at the sound of footsteps. "You'll give the girls a heart attack, running around like that."

Warren chose to ignore the commentary. "Good evening to you, too," he replied, heading for the big fridge and the bottle of Grey Goose in the freezer. It was hidden under some bags of peas and carrots. Pulling it out, he poured himself a healthy glass of vodka, straight up.

"I wondered who that belonged to," Bobby said now.

Warren looked around. "You snooping?"

"Stumbled over it by accident. You might want to hide it better. The kids don't come in here much, but sometimes they do. And I don't suppose you'd be willing to share? I am eighteen."

"But not twenty-one." Warren put the bottle back, adding packages of frozen pasta to the pile on top. Then turning, he leaned up against the counter, wings fanned out, ankles crossed. He was disconcerted to find Bobby there. It wasn't that he disliked teens, but they made him uncomfortable, despite having lived with them for months. He wasn't really the teacher type. "What's up?"

"Nothing."

"You always awake at midnight asking for vodka?"

Bobby shot him a look. "Ha, ha." He took a sip of what smelled like hot tea. Warren sipped his own drink, and neither said anything. Warren wished the boy would go away, even as he realized the kid was probably wishing the same thing about him. Suddenly, Bobby said, "Would you be insulted if, um, I asked a kinda nosey question?"

Warren's eyebrows lifted. "I can't know until you ask. How about you ask, and I tell you if I want to answer?"

"Fair enough." Bobby had been frowning at his tea. Now he glanced up once, then back down, the frown still there. "There was some talk, about you and Mr. Summers. They said you were sleeping together."

Warren literally spit vodka out his nose. _"What?"_

"So you weren't?"

"Where did you hear that?" Warren reached for a towel to wipe eyes streaming from the burn of alcohol on sensitive membranes. He didn't want to explain that he and Scott had, indeed, been _sleeping_ together - and that was all. He doubted the kids would believe it, or understand.

"It's been around the school," Bobby said now, "among the older students."

Good God, what were they saying? And Jean wanted to try a genuine _ménage-à-troi_s? Bobby was watching him carefully. "Mr. Summers," Warren said, "is very straight, and very in love with Dr. Grey."

Curiously, Bobby's face seemed to _fall_ at that, rather than appear relieved. "I figured it was just gossip."

Now, it was Warren's turn to frown. Picking up his vodka and coming over to the little eat-in table, he pulled out the chair opposite Bobby's, sat down, and studied the boy's face. "Why did you want to know?"

"Just curious."

"I don't think so."

Bobby didn't answer. Warren, who'd learned patience when dealing with people, waited him out. Bobby was looking at the black-and-white tile, the chrome appliances, the overhead lights - everywhere but at Warren. Finally, he said, "I just . . . I don't know. If you and Scott had . . . you know - well, I know you're close. I just . . . wondered how you felt? With Jean back, and all."

In truth, Warren didn't want to talk about that. He'd come down here after vodka so he could _stop_ thinking about it, but the boy's mixture of trust and embarrassment over his line of inquiry wasn't something Warren could ignore. "Is this about Rogue? Is she seeing someone else?"

To his surprise, Bobby jerked to his feet and stalked away - then back. "No! It's not about Rogue! Would people quit asking me that?"

"Sorry." Warren said nothing else, hoping the boy might give him more clues.

"It's just - he left, you know? He was supposed to be my best friend, but he left - to go join _Magneto_. And my family doesn't want me, or wouldn't if they knew the truth. And now Rogue doesn't want me either."

Warren decided to shoot at the rabbit that had run across first. "Who's the 'he'?"

"John." Bobby sighed out and dropped back into the chair, which scraped a little against the tile. "St. John Allerdyce, my roommate."

"Did you love him?"

Bobby jerked his head up. "What made you ask that?"

Warren held up both hands. "It's just a question, not an accusation. I'm a pretty tolerant guy, Bobby. And there are many kinds of love. I didn't ask if you'd fucked him; that's your business. I asked if you loved him."

Bobby's face was scarlet, eyes a little wide at Warren's bluntness. "It wasn't like that. We were best buds, y'know? At least, I thought so. He's been gone nine months, and I still think about him. Dr. Grey coming back . . . it kind of brought it all up again. Made me remember."

Instinctively, Warren reached out to pat Bobby's hands where they were folded together in front of his tea cup, but the boy jerked back. Rolling eyes, Warren said, "That wasn't a come-on, you know. Anyway, if you've been really close to someone and lose them, you miss them, even months later - and you miss them even if you're mad at them. As for what you're feeling - it's okay to love your friend."

"Do you love Scott?"

The question shut Warren up momentarily. Was the private life of the adults the business of the kids? But Warren didn't have to explain the whole complicated mess. "Yes," he said finally. "We've been very close for a very long time. Scott's like the brother I never had."

Bobby nodded. "I thought John was - well, not the brother I never had. I've got a brother, but we don't get along too well. Johnny was different. I _thought_."

"Love sucks sometimes," Warren told him. "And not just the romantic kind. Family, friends - none of it's easy."

"Gee, thanks," Bobby replied.

Great. Warren could run a multi-billion dollar corporation, but didn't know how to cheer up a kid. Rising, he took his glass of vodka and said awkwardly, "You'll get past it." Patting Bobby's shoulder, he headed back upstairs.

* * *

Dawn brought a bleary-eyed Hank McCoy and Dan Moser to the front steps of St. Luke's, following a night of work and a very early conference call with the CDC in Atlanta. They'd all agreed it was time to talk to the media. _Good Morning America_ had wanted an exclusive, but didn't get it. If Hank hadn't been ready to speak before, now that he was, he wanted the information disseminated as widely as possible, as quickly as possible.

After a shower and shave and a change of shirt, Hank appeared, with Dan for backup, in front of the hospital to face a crowd of reporters and their blinding lights. Spotting Trish Tilby, Hank nodded gravely to her, and she nodded back - like martial artists prepared to engage. Questions were already being fired, but Hank ignored them to issue a general statement to the sea of mics.

"I know all of you have been anxious to find out the details of these recent illnesses in the Bronx. Unfortunately, the necessary tests took time to complete, and it was only yesterday afternoon" - he glanced pointedly at Tilby - "that we received conclusive results. It seems we have a new virus on the loose, one that attacks only those who carry an X-gene, commonly known as mutants."

Reporters waited, cameras trained on him, and taking a breath, Hank told them what he knew, ending with, "This is not an epidemic yet, and won't be, if people take the precautions we've outlined. Nor is the virus always deadly, so it's _essential_ that anyone experiencing severe flu-like symptoms seek medical attention immediately, even if one doesn't believe he or she is a mutant. Thank you."

The air nearly exploded with follow-up questions, and Hank stayed another ten minutes, assuring the public as best he could that the virus was fragile, difficult to pass, but not to be taken lightly. The reporters also wanted to know about the threat to non-mutants. "Non-mutants are unaffected by the disease," Hank replied. "And so there is no reason to attack mutants who may be ill."

"You fear a rise in mutant-related hate crimes?" That question had come from Trish Tilby.

"In the present social climate, unfortunately, yes, even though non-mutants are not in danger."

"But don't viruses mutate? This may be limited only to mutants now, but what about in a year?"

Hank's voice was grim. "We have reason to believe that this virus will mutate slowly, if at all."

Tilby looked skeptical, but another reporter leapt in with a question about vaccines, and Hank was grateful not to go into how he knew it wouldn't mutate. The one detail he hadn't shared involved the engineered nature of the virus. That would generate all kinds of flak, and he wanted to be absolutely certain he was right before publicly accusing some unknown individual of an act of bioterrorism.

After a few more minutes, Hank had reiterated all the salient information and reporters were just repeating their questions in different words, so he called a halt and went back inside. Mostly, the reporters dispersed, but he heard a tap-tap of heels behind him and turned. Trish Tilby caught up to him. "Ms. Tilby," he said. "If you're hoping for a private interview, I've already given all the information we know."

"I doubt that," she said, head tilted skeptically, then barreled on before he could object. "But I don't want to ask more questions about this virus. I'd like to ask you questions about the whole _process_, to understand better what's involved in viral research, so I can help viewers understand."

Suspicious that she might just be looking for a chance to get him alone and press him further, he said, "Right now, I'm really rather tired. We've been up all night; the data came in late yesterday afternoon, and - "

"Tomorrow then," she interrupted. "We could do lunch - or breakfast, if you prefer. I know where you get your coffee."

Her face was serious, but her eyes were . . . not entirely. Hank narrowed his. "All right. Breakfast - but Thursday, not tomorow. Same place? I believe they have pastries."

"Thursday it is." And turning, she tap-tapped back out in her spike heels. Hank tried not to notice that her dark blue suit fit her - and her derriere - quite well.

"I think she likes you," Dan said, half laughing.

"I think she's hoping for an exclusive."

"That, too," Dan agreed.

* * *

**Notes:** Trish's interview questions owe a great deal to assistance from ridesandruns, and just for her, I put in The Pony. Trish Tilby is a canon comics character. As always, thanks to Leslie for the virus information.


	29. My Brother's Keeper

"Mr. President, thank you for seeing me."

The president looked up from his desk and offered a thin smile. "Senator Kelly - what can I do for you this fine Tuesday morning?"

Mystique-as-Kelly walked a little further into the Oval Office and adopted a posture somewhere between submissive and assertive. "I'd like to convene a special session of Congress to pass a bill granting federal aid for research on this new mutant virus."

McKenna blinked, clearly taken by surprise. "Senator, while I recognize the seriousness of the disease, I think it's a little early for that -"

"I don't. The sooner we address the problem, the less it's going to cost the government in the long run. You know it and I know it. We have AIDS as an example."

Straightening, McKenna pushed around pens on his desk blotter. "This is the middle of July. Convening Congress to ask aid for something that hasn't even been called an epidemic yet, much less a national threat, wouldn't be a popular move."

"Because it's for mutants? There are children dying, Mr. President. And after the fiasco last fall with Stryker, this would be seen as a reconciling gesture towards the mutant constituency."

McKenna's lips thinned. "I'm well aware, Bob, of the need for reparations. But for now, this is a local tragedy - and still belongs under state jurisdiction. Do you know how many local tragedies there are around the country?" He held up a hand when Mystique-Kelly tried to interrupt. "I know it could quickly become a national problem. And I have no objection to you proposing a bill for aid when Congress convenes in the fall. In fact, I'll give you my full backing. But until and unless this gets a lot bigger, we're not tackling it right now."

Mystique-Kelly dropped her chin and stared at the carpet and the Presidential Seal on it. She hadn't expected anything else, but she'd had to try. And whatever this president might have done to redeem himself after Stryker, he'd just lost again most of the points from that side of the tally.

"Yes, Mr. President," s/he said. "I understand."

* * *

Hank hadn't gone home on Tuesday until after lunch, when he, Dan, his colleagues in Atlanta - and Jean by stealth - had conclusively determined that the virus was engineered. Really, it had been obvious by Monday night, but they'd all wanted to be absolutely sure before they contacted the authorities. This was no longer just a medical emergency. It was also a federal crime.

Once their findings had been reported to the local FBI, Hank and Jean made surreptitious copies of the data, then headed back to the mansion, where they both crashed. When Hank woke and stumbled into the bathroom to brush his teeth, he found a sticky-note on his mirror written in his mother's hand**:** _We didn't want to wake you, since there's nothing you can do now, but see Charles as soon as you get up._

He didn't even bother finishing his teeth, and barely remembered his pants.

Slamming open the professor's office door without knocking, he asked, "What happened?" The professor motioned to a seat, but Hank was too agitated to sit down. "What?"

"It appears that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security arrived at St. Luke's late this afternoon to confiscate all data on the virus."

"What?" Hank couldn't believe it. "They have no right!"

"Dan Moser called me about three hours ago. His staff had called him at home as soon as it happened, but no one there had the authority - or, I think, the gall - to oppose federal officers with warrants."

"_Why?" _Hank collapsed back into a seat, and only now noticed that it was dark outside.

"As soon as word reached Washington this afternoon that the virus was engineered, it changed from a local health crisis into a potential national security crisis."

"What does the FBI think they can do that the CDC can't?" Hank was furious. "_We_ are _the_ National Center for Infectious Diseases!"

"Well, I assume they think - or hope - they can find the culprit." Xavier's voice was wry. "And from what I was told, the CDC still has their data. It's just St. Luke's that wasn't deemed secure enough. Dr. Moser's staff was told there are fears it might fall into the wrong hands - people who could tweak the viral genome to make it deadly to non-mutants."

Frustrated, Hank slapped his forehead. "Charles, that's ridiculous. I can barely even credit this virus exists if I hadn't seen the evidence with my own eyes. It's _theoretically_ possible, but we're not there yet, in terms of real world ability to produce anything like it."

"Yet someone clearly did."

"Obviously. But taking our sequencing and samples won't matter. It's not a blueprint for duplicating it for non-mutants."

"Whatever the case, research at St. Luke's has been shut down. You'll have to return to Atlanta, I fear, to do further work."

"Where they'll be all over us, watching like hawks and getting in our damn way. I _hate_ the feds."

Xavier smiled. "Henry, technically speaking, you _are_ a fed. You work for the National Department of Health and Human Services."

"Don't remind me," he muttered, then got up. "Well, let me go talk to Atlanta, see what's up there. Does Jean know yet?"

"Jean woke an hour or so ago, and I told her then. I understand she went immediately to sequester herself in the lab. She made mention of certain files?" His eyebrows went up, and Hank felt himself blushing.

"We copied the sequencing and some other data, mostly so we could work on it here in the meantime. But if we have to, we can work on it here period. And we may have to."

"I'm sure the CDC will still grant you access, Henry - you are chief researcher on the project. They only shut down work at St. Luke's for security reasons."

"I'm not worried about being granted access, but Jean's most recent research is going to be pivotal in finding answers, and most of it's still unpublished. _She_ has access to it, of course, and at St. Luke's, she had access to all the data we had. Plus, well . . . ." Hank sighed. "Dan knew who she was." At that, the professor's chin went down and he steepled his fingers. "I know - you didn't want anyone outside the mansion to be told, but it came out by accident. Dan was nervous at first, but then he was thrilled." Hank eyed his old mentor. "We may need to speed up news of Jean's return."

"I don't think that advisable. Especially as her return seems to dovetail with this viral outbreak." The professor sighed. "Henry, the unfortunate truth is that, with the federal government deciding this is a serious threat, anything overly 'convenient' could be regarded as highly suspicious and result in an investigation that neither Jean nor this school can afford." He dropped his hands and sat back. "What may work best at this point is to tell your bosses that Jean Grey's fiancé and parents have permitted you access to her notes, and you believe it imperative to stay here to organize that information."

"They'll want to know why I can't take it there."

"Tell them it's too scattered and fragmentary at present." He smiled faintly. "I do know something of the notes of researchers. I dare say they'll buy that. Then the two of you can work here. Jean wouldn't likely be granted security clearance there, in any case."

"Actually, she probably would. I could make a water-tight case for why we need her."

"Well, in a few months time, Jean can return when it will seem less coincidental."

Hank pondered that; it made sense, and he nodded, then looked up at Xavier. "Have you thought about the fact this _is_ rather coincidental - the virus and Jean's resurrection? I'm not a suspicious man, Charles, but I am trained to observe a confluence of clues."

Nodding solemnly, Xavier said, "I have considered that. But as I understand the timeline, the virus must have been released in the late spring - before Jean's spirit left Alkali, and long after it was quiescent at the mansion. I believe this may, indeed, be a case of genuine serendipity. Or perhaps even that those dying in the Bronx called to her."

"You make it sound like King Arthur coming to the aid of Britain in her time of need."

The professor chuckled. "You and Jean, and your fondness for British myth. Go call Atlanta."

* * *

Late Tuesday evening, the professor convened a staff meeting in the sub-basement conference room. It included the usual adults and, for the first time, the junior X-Men, as well. All four sat together at a far table, looking a bit intimidated by the company. Ororo sat at another table with Doug, who, despite the strangeness, had been making himself right at home. He'd memorized the name of every student and the layout of the entire grounds - in just three days. That morning, she'd found him down in the Danger Room control area, head and shoulders buried in the guts of the board. At her startled gasp, he'd surfaced to grin and explain that the professor had asked him to examine the VR equipment, see if it could be improved - and from the looks of things, he'd thought it could be. She'd left him to it, escaping before he felt impelled to explain it all to her.

When she'd mentioned the incident later to the professor, just to be sure Doug was on the level - after Mystique's infiltration of the mansion, Ororo didn't think they could be too careful - Xavier had nodded and said, "One of the lures of this place for Dr. Ramsey was the chance to stretch _all_ his talents. He'll be joining the team as our technical consultant; we've been in serious need of one since Hank left the state."

Ororo knew that, years ago, Erik Lehnsherr had performed the technical jobs around the mansion - including the construction of the sub-basement and helping Xavier to build Cerebro. Later, Hank had taken over, indulging his voracious curiosity and talents. But the professor was right; they'd been winging it since Hank had left for Atlanta. They could use Doug's expertise - and from the glee on his face that morning, she suspected that getting his hands on the toys in the sub-basement had been a good part of why he'd joined their faculty.

In any case, Hank and Jean stood now at the room's front with several diagrams projected onto the screens. Hank began bluntly. "This virus was engineered."

Silence greeted that. Even the professor appeared nonplused , and Ororo wasn't entirely sure what Hank _meant_. Doug sat forward in his seat. "Someone _made_ it?"

Hank gave a short, sharp nod. "Exactly."

"Why in hell would anyone do that?" Warren asked.

"Hate," Ororo replied.

Again, Hank nodded. "That is, unfortunately, the most likely explanation. But Jean and I want to update you with what we've learned about the virus, so far." With a pointer, he indicated the first slide. "This is a picture of the virus, taken by an electron microscope. It's a lentivirus - the same basic viral type as HIV. As Scott explained to you yesterday, this makes the virus very delicate, as viruses go. Now, if you'll look at this diagram, it shows the results of a PCR, a test typically used, among other things, to identify known viruses. Compare these results on the left to those on the right - PCR results for Ebola. This virus' genome and internal proteins come from a lentivirus, but the genes for its surface proteins match Ebola - which is a filovirus."

"Which means?" Warren prompted. "Cut to the chase, Monkey Toes." The nickname startled a laugh out of the kids.

Mock glaring, Hank adjusted his glasses. "Yes, well, my point is that these two things do not go together in nature. Yet not only do we find them together in Legacy, the viral genome is both amazingly neat, and also has significant chunks of code missing. In short, it was first created, then fixed to prevent it from mutating again easily."

"What Hank's saying," Jean interjected, "is that not only will this virus not attack non-mutants now, but it's unlikely to mutate in that direction any time in the near future."

"A viral bullet with 'mutant' stamped all over it," Scott finished, sounding grim; Jean just nodded.

"Do we have any idea who would do this?" Ororo asked. "Aside from a group who hates us?"

Hank shook his head. "Ro, I can't even figure out _how_ it was done. This kind of hybrid is theoretically possible, but practically _im_possible, in terms of the engineering."

"To make it stranger," Jean said, rising for what was apparently her half of the presentation, "it doesn't target all mutants equally. No virus is ever one-hundred percent deadly, and there are a variety of factors that decide who lives and who dies. But Legacy is . . . picky." She flicked up a new set of diagram slides. "As most of you know, your X-gene codes for a protein called a 'transcription factor' that binds to the DNA of other genes, turning them on. All these different genes come together to produce the type of mutant you are - the physical manifestations of your power. There is more than one form or allele of the X-gene, which is why we have such a variety of mutations, both physical and psionic, and even a few already manifested at birth, as with Kurt." She gestured to him where he was perched on a lowboy at the back of the conference room, and he waved his tail in amused acknowledgment.

Turning back to the pictures, she aimed her laser pointer at the image on the far left. "This diagram shows what I call a 'second-generation' X-gene. Legacy has a sequence of DNA that is the same as the recognition site where an activated X-gene transcription factor binds to our nuclear DNA - the virus needs the X-gene so it can grow. But Legacy's viral sequence has been engineered so that its DNA won't bind to these second-generation X-genes as efficiently, and the virus can't grow as well. That makes it less virulent.

"The short story is that second-generation X-genes handicap the virus, allowing those mutants to survive it."

A lot of uncomfortable glancing about met this announcement. "Is there a way to know if you've got that second-generation gene?" Jubilee asked.

"I already have all the DNA mapped for everyone at the school except" - she nodded towards Ro's table - "Kurt and Dr. Ramsey."

"Doug," Doug corrected.

She smiled. "Doug, then."

"And where do we fall?" Jubilee prompted. It was, Ororo thought, the question on everyone's mind, even if the adults were a little more patient in asking it.

"If you'd like that information, I'll be glad to give it to you, but not just now. Come see me in the lab after the meeting. I should also add that while second-generation X-genes should allow one to survive the virus, other factors do matter. Anyone in poor health is at an elevated risk regardless, and some, by the nature of their mutation, would survive anyway. For instance, Logan has a very early type X-gene, but he also has a healing factor. Likewise, Scott's mutation creates such high levels of radiation in his body, no bacteria or viruses survive long. There's a reason he never gets the flu." A few chuckles greeted that, but very subdued. "My main point is that few absolutes exist when it comes to viral infections. With any luck, this discussion will be academic for us here, but we wanted the rest of you to know the virus was _created_. We'll continue to work on finding a cure, but viral research is notoriously complicated, so don't expect quick results."

And with that, the meeting appeared to be over. Hank and Jean shut off their slides and packed notes while the staff rose to disperse, the kids moving towards the door, talking to the professor. Ororo made to follow with Kurt - but Doug, wearing a deep frown, approached Hank and Jean. Curious, Ro halted and turned back. "A question, if I may?" Doug asked.

"Certainly, Dr. Ramsey." Hank stuck out his big hand. "Nice to meet you at last; I'm sorry I wasn't here on Saturday when you arrived."

"I think you were busy elsewhere," Doug said, shaking Hank's hand. "And it's Doug, please. Anyway, as you two were speaking at the end, something struck me. We've assumed that whoever created this virus did so because he or she hates mutants, but I'm not sure that follows." Hank and Jean glanced at each other, and Doug continued, "It seems that this virus wasn't created to kill mutants, but only to kill _some_ mutants - those with a more primitive form of the X-gene."

Ororo blinked, startled. That hadn't even occurred to her. Scott and Warren had approached, too, and stood behind Doug to listen, even as the professor motored back. The kids and Kurt were hanging about the door, exchanging startled glances. If Doug realized he had an audience, it didn't seem to faze him.

"I'm not sure I'd call the other genes 'primitive' - " Jean was saying.

"But in terms of evolutionary development, they are. I'm not attaching a judgement to that - I've probably got one." He shifted. "My point is only that this may not be some bigot with a hate-on for mutants. What if it's someone with a completely different agenda?" He turned to Hank. "You said this virus would be nearly impossible to engineer, though it's theoretically possible. Why?"

"Both the equipment as well as the expertise necessary aren't yet at that level."

Doug nodded, hands pressed together in front of him. "I in no way mean what I'm about to say as an insult, as I'm very familiar with the prominence of you both in your fields, but with the right mutation, it might indeed be possible."

Hank appeared intrigued, though Jean was frowning. Scott had once confided to Ororo that like many highly intelligent people, Jean measured her self-worth in terms of her brainpower. Making her feel stupid struck her as a personal attack. Ro had kept that in mind ever since, and no fool, Doug must have sensed the same as he now gave a nervous little jounce on the balls of his feet, but, hands still pressed together in front of his mouth like a suppliant, forged ahead anyway. "If I were a geneticist, I could make this virus. It's my mutation - pattern recognition." He appeared almost embarrassed, and Ororo felt sorry for him. He must have spent his whole life apologizing for leaving others in the dust and dealing with their resentment. "And so it occurs to me that we may not be dealing with a normal geneticist."

"Nathaniel Essex!"

That had come from Warren, who appeared thunderstruck. Then he and the professor exchanged a glance as if they both had the same idea. "Warren may be onto something," Xavier said. "We have been investigating Dr. Essex for something else."

"The pharmaceuticals!" Scott interjected, and Ororo was starting to feel as if she'd missed a memo somewhere.

"Would someone care to begin at the beginning?" she asked.

Scott sighed and made a vague gesture. "It started last Christmas. Warren dragged me to a party at the Hellfire Club - it's this ritzy group for New York elite. He wanted company in his misery. Anyway, Sebastian Shaw was there - remember Shaw, who debated Hank last fall?" The rest of them nodded obediently. "He was very much in the anti-mutant camp then, but we spotted him hanging out with Emma Frost at the party."

"Emma!" Ororo said, shocked.

For Doug's sake, Scott elaborated, "Emma was a student of ours who graduated a few years back - something of a problem."

"She was a _bitch_, he means." That had come from Jubilee, who'd joined the group finally with the other junior X-Men. At a stern look from the professor, she added, "Well, she _was_. She thought she was above pretty much everybody except 'Berto and a couple others from money."

"In any case," Scott cut in, "Emma Frost is a _mutant_, which makes it odd for her to seek Shaw's company. War and I started to check it out, but this guy intervened, asking a bunch of question about Jean - Nathaniel Essex. He hadn't realized Jean was dead. He was . . . creepy."

"Nathaniel _is_ creepy," Jean said, and Hank nodded. "I spent most of last year at Stockholm peering around hotel hallway corners, trying to avoid him."

"Well," Scott went on, "to find out if Shaw and Emma had any connection beyond her wanting his support for an office in the club, Warren started monitoring them, and just before we left for Alaska, he turned up some strange stock connections between Shaw, Emma, and several other Hellfire members. All of them had bought into this small pharmaceutical company that Essex's family owns."

"And this means he's making mutant viruses . . . why?" Jubilee asked, dubious.

"Contrary to their public image," the professor replied, "Sebastian Shaw and his associates - including Dr. Essex - are _mutants_." That won double-takes. "Warren and I determined that last Sunday, and realized at the time there must be more afoot here. But we were unsure what."

"Now I think we know the what," Scott said grimly.

"But why would these guys wanna kill mutants if they _are_ mutants?" Jubilee persisted.

"Nathaniel is a geneticist, just like me, Jubilee," Jean said. "Very brilliant, and very strange. His theories are regarded as . . . ethically questionable." She was frowning. "As horrible as it is, I wouldn't put the idea for this virus past him. He was quite interested in a paper I gave on second-generation mutations and kept wanting to talk to me about it. I thought he was fishing for data I hadn't published yet, in order to replicate it and publish first. But" - she glanced down at the white diagram slides in her hand - "he may have beaten me to it all years ago . . . just wanted to know what I knew. This virus took a long time to create. One thing he kept talking about was future directions in the development of 'homo sapiens superior.' He likes the label, though it's politically controversial; most of us prefer 'homo sapiens mutatis.' His choice of term says a lot, in itself."

"But if he believes mutants are 'better,'" Ororo asked, "why not engineer the virus to affect normal humans, as well? He does not sound like the kind who would refrain out of pity."

Hank and Jean shrugged, and even Doug appeared puzzled. It was Warren who spoke up. "That kind of widespread death would shatter the economy. Remember the Black Death in Medieval Europe? Research of this sort takes _money_, which requires backers and stockholders. They're not going to give him money if what he's doing will throw society into turmoil and crash the stock market. Even if Shaw and his cronies are mutants, they depend on Wall Street. Whatever Essex's weird plans, Shaw, Frost and the rest are out for Numero Uno."

"Another thing," Jean added, "this second-generation X-gene is very dominant, unlike others. By deleting less dominant X-genes from the genetic pool, the natural shift to a population of mutants would happen faster. After an initial drop in births, mutant offspring would edge out non-mutant _more_ rapidly, and the mutations seen would be more powerful, more complex, and less inclined to be evolutionary dead-ends. So Nathaniel could afford to strike a bargain that left non-mutants untouched."

"Talk about making a deal with the devil," Rogue muttered.

"Do we have enough evidence to prove this Dr. Essex is the culprit?" Kurt asked.

"Not quite yet," Doug answered, and Scott was nodding. "If we laid out all these facts for the FBI, he'd be a strong suspect, but all the evidence is circumstantial still. We need more."

"I'm supposed to meet with Emma Frost this Thursday afternoon," Warren put in, "so maybe I can get more clues then."

Scott swung around to stare. "Since when are you meeting with Emma?"

"Since she sent me a telepathic message as I was leaving brunch Sunday - wants to meet at the Met after lunch Thursday. Wouldn't say why. I don't know if she's trying to spy for Shaw, or if she's running her own gambit."

"I'm going with you."

"She'll recognize you," Jean pointed out, "and Warren will need another telepath anyway, to be sure Emma doesn't probe him. I'll go; I can hide from her."

"Actually, I'd planned to follow along in Cerebro, as before," Xavier broke in.

"Charles -"

"_Jean. _Patience."

* * *

Out of the public eye, relations were still awkward among the Mutant Musketeers, and by Thursday, Jean feared that Warren was surreptitiously avoiding both her and Scott. She didn't know if this was an attempt to escape dealing with them angling to come with him to the Met, or from discomfort with the subject of their last telepathic conversation, but she had to get to the bottom of it. So she headed to Warren's suite as he was packing to leave for his own apartment in the city.

When she arrived, the front suite door was open, and some of his bags were already in the hall. She knocked and poked her head in, but didn't see him, so she headed through the sitting room to the bedroom. A light from the in-suite told her where he was - as did sniffling.

Good heavens, was he crying? Her heart broke; this past week and a half had been very rough on him, she knew. "Oh,_ War_," she said, moving towards the bathroom.

He stuck his head around the edge of the door. "Is knocking out of fashion?"

"I did knock - you didn't hear. Are you crying?" she asked bluntly.

He gave a disgusted snort. "No - I was blowing my nose. Allergies." He ducked into the bathroom, shut off the light, and emerged, buttoning his cuffs. Someone had already helped him into the wingrack. "What's up?"

She eyed him, skeptical. Warren no more than Scott liked to reveal his feelings. "I was just coming to say that Scott and I were thinking about driving into the city tonight."

He frowned. "You're not planning to sneak -"

"_No. _We're not." She glared. "I just - the three of us need to spend some time together away from the mansion. Want to take out your boat?"

Grabbing his jacket, he said, "I'm headed to the office first, then to the Met, then back to the office. I'm not sure when I'll get away for the evening."

"Warren . . . no pressure, no debates. Just the three of us on a boat."

"Jean, I can't." He shrugged into his jacket, started to brush past her, then paused to give her a quick kiss. "I'm not angry - I know that's what you think. But I'm so behind on business, I think I'm ahead." Grabbing his suitbag and a last suitcase, he headed out, leaving her there. Sighing, she started to strip the bed so the maid wouldn't have to, then shook her head. What was she doing? With a wave of her hand, the bed stripped itself, and the bedclothes, along with the towels from the bathroom, landed in a neat heap by the door. Then she headed down to breakfast.

On the stairs, she ran into Kitty Pryde, who was that rare thing - a chipper teenager in the morning. Today, however, she seemed unusually withdrawn, and Jean watched her from the corner of her eye as she lagged behind, coming down the grand staircase. This new caution was something she'd seen in several students, and she thought it time to confront it. So when they reached the landing, Jean drew Kitty aside, over near a broom closet. It was early enough that there weren't many people around. "I make you nervous now, don't I?" Jean asked and Kitty's dark eyes went wide; she took a step back. Jean blew out in frustration, running a hand into her hair. "I'm not going to punish you for being nervous, Kitty. I'm just tired of pretending."

Not looking at Jean, Kitty said, "The professor told us that all that ghostly stuff last fall _was_ you, so I guess you left the pictures on my bed, too, since everyone else says they didn't." Baffled, Jean frowned, and so Kitty described her blow up at her roommates, her subsequent talk with Dr. McCoy, and then finding a bed full of pictures of Jean when young. And while Jean had no recollection of anything Kitty had said, she'd like to think she had, indeed, left those pictures. She understood all too well Kitty's teenaged insecurity at being the intimidating brainy girl with the flat chest. Kitty ended with, "I was a little embarrassed that you overheard, but, um, I wanted to say 'thanks.' I mean, you probably don't remember, but, yeah - thanks."

Jean smiled. "You're welcome. That was all you were nervous about? That I'd overheard your fight?"

Kitty paused, then said, "Sunday morning, did you know you broke Jones' leg, then fixed it? He said he heard it snap when a table fell on him, but then the table was off him and his leg was fine."

While Jean had known generally what she'd done, she hadn't known all the details, and frowned now to realize her carelessness had harmed a student. "He's all right?"

"He's fine. Like it never happened."

"I'm glad." Jean gripped Kitty's shoulders, saying earnestly, "Believe me, the last thing I want is to hurt anyone."

"We know you don't mean any harm," Kitty said, a little discomfitted. "When we all first came here, you were nicest. Well, besides the professor. Getting to know Mr. Summers and Ms. Munroe took longer, but you were friendly to everyone right from the start." She offered a tentative smile. "We do remember that." And she slipped past Jean, heading out through the main hall towards the dining room. Jean was left with a lot to think about.

* * *

"Ms. Tilby," Hank McCoy said as he came through the belled door of Beans. It was a small local shop, and Trish had snagged a bistro table by the window, mug in front of her as she perused the _Times_, deliberately casual.

Now, laying aside the paper, she stood to lean across the table and shake his hand - and show the decolletage of her crisp, white satin blouse. "Dr. McCoy, I'm glad you have some time for me."

"Hank, please," he said, blushing and jerking his thumb over his shoulder as he added, "let me get breakfast. You want a bagel or pastry or anything?"

She swallowed a smile. "No, thank you." And he hurried away.

Yes, indeed, she'd read him right. A consummate geek. Put him on the spot about his area of expertise and he performed like a pro, but casually display her female graces, and he was thrown. (Well, such graces as a 41-year-old still had, but she'd like to think she hadn't gone entirely to seed.) Now that he was getting food and committed, she tucked away her paper to fetch her tape-recorder and pad. She also turned in her seat so that her suit skirt rode up past the knee, showing long crossed legs. Not to an unprofessional degree - she was no Mata Hari. But she was going to crack that cool this time, and there were many tools of the trade. She was ready.

He trundled back over with quite a spread - three bagels, a large honey bun, and coffee. She refrained from staring. In her business, no one ate like that, men or women. The camera was unforgiving, and unfortunately, in TV reporting, looks mattered as much as brains. She almost felt proxy pounds from those bagels inch across the table to glue themselves to her hips. "I figured you'd have your whole crew," Hank said now, putting (real!) butter on his bagels.

"I told you - this is my attempt to understand what it is you do. But first, let me verify my data about your credentials. You have a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Columbia? And a medical degree, as well?"

"Correct."

"You also happen to be a mutant yourself?" He glanced up, face hard, as if he suspected her of bias. She sighed. "Dr. McCoy - Hank - it's not a trick question, and I have nothing against mutants. Both my sister's children are mutants."

She hadn't intended to tell him that, and bit her tongue too late. She should maintain a proper distance, but she'd been pricked by his glare, and wanted him to know she wasn't unsympathetic.

"Yes," he said now. "I am a mutant myself."

Nodding, she turned on her tape recorder. "Then let's get down to business. While I do know something about the X-gene, if you could first explain to me how it works, and then explain what is involved in viral research - identifying new viruses and finding inoculations against them - we'll go from there."

It was late morning before they finally left the shop, Trish in possession of seven pages of McCoy's explanatory diagrams scribbled on yellow pad, two tapes' worth of interview, and a headache. But the last was from trying to wrap her mind around a field she hadn't excelled in, in school, not from Hank's company. He'd proven an unexpectedly good teacher when he wasn't trying _not_ to look down her cleavage. Although her goal in dressing to set him off the mark had succeeded, she rather regretted it. She missed the rapier wit of their prior exchanges, even while she found his shyness rather charming.

Before they parted to their respective vehicles, he handed her his card. "Not that I think you'll have much use for it," he said, running a nervous hand through his hair. "It's my office in Atlanta, and I'm still working up here for a while."

"Even though they shut down St. Luke's?" It was her first probing question of the day - she'd kept her promise not to pump him about the virus.

His eyebrow lifted, and she caught a fleeting glimpse of the other McCoy. "Now that we have the viral genome isolated, research at St. Luke's isn't as critical."

"But aren't there still Legacy patients at St. Luke's?" Her bullshit detector had begun beeping.

"In the past few days, Legacy patients have begun popping up all over the country, and even a case or three in Britain and Germany. In any case, research at the CDC can step up now from figuring out what we have to working on a vaccine."

"Which could take years, from what you just told me."

He sighed. "It's true, unfortunately. But with luck - and some additional federal aid - it won't." He eyed her. "Be sure you include that in your next broadcast. Get people to call their representatives so they know funding for research should be in the budget when Congress convenes in the fall."

"My fee for your lessons?"

She'd meant it humorously, but his mouth thinned. "I believe education should be free, Ms. Tilby. There was no 'fee' for this morning, but I would hope you'd feel enough social responsibility to include the plea." And turning, he stalked off, leaving her annoyed with him again for implying that she didn't care about the welfare of others. She'd gone into journalism because she cared.

"Self-righteous prick," she muttered to herself, opening her car door and tossing in her bag, the notes, and the tape recorder.

* * *

The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue wasn't terribly far from Warren's office building, which was why he liked to go there to think. His favorite sections were on the second floor, but on Thursday, he wandered the first, waiting for Emma.

She arrived about half an hour after he had. He was in the Egyptian wing, Gallery 12 all done in ivory tones from the walls to the sculptures with their slant eyes and wide faces. She entered, looking as pale as everything else with her blonde-blonde hair and creamy skin. Warren was standing near a pair of sphinxes as she moseyed over. "Fancy meeting you here, Mr. Worthington," she said.

He nodded a greeting. "I like the place."

Lips curled in a small smile, she reached out to stroke one sphinx's lion-paw, though visitors weren't supposed to touch the artwork. Then again, "don't" wasn't in Emma's vocabulary. "I like the Egyptian wing best," she said. "So much glory; they knew how to build to impress." Meanwhile, in his head, she said, _I assume you've heard about this new mutant virus?_

Unused to carrying on dual conversations, he blinked, trying to follow one and answer the other. _It's all over the papers, so yes, I know about the virus. What do _you_ know?_

_I know who created it. _Aloud, she asked him, "Do you remember the story of Oedipus and the sphinx? The sphinx guarded the road into Thebes, and anyone who wished to pass had to answer a riddle, or they were her dinner. Oedipus answered."

"What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?" Warren remembered his classical education. "The answer was 'man.'"

"Indeed. The evolution of a human life."

Warren projected. _We know who created the virus, too - Nathaniel Essex. We also know you have stock in his family pharmaceuticals company._

She shot him a startled look. Clearly, she'd assumed she was on the information high ground here. _He told us it would only attack lesser mutants, or the old. _She frowned. _It's killing children. I didn't sign on to kill mutant children. So I wanted someone to know it was constructed. _

Warren did his best to hide his revulsion. Whatever he thought of her ethics, it sounded as if she might be willing to spill the beans. _Unfortunately, knowing isn't enough. Would you agree to testify against Essex? The evidence is circumstantial right now, but with testimony -_

Emma jerked her hand back from the sphinx as if it were hot and her expression was stark, though she didn't look at him. _Are you mad? They'd kill me before I ever got to the witness stand._

_There's protection available for witnesses -_

_Idiot. Do you think that would stop them? You know exactly how far money can get people like us. _ She looked at him then, and spoke aloud. "Was Oedipus better off for solving the sphinx's riddle, do you think? He won the day - got the kingdom and the girl. Too bad she turned out to be his own mother, and his sacrilege brought a plague on his city." Her smile was cold. "Heroes sometimes screw up, don't they?"

_It doesn't have to be like that,_ Warren told her. _I could protect you._

_My white knight in shining armor? I thought you were angling for the office of king?_

_Emma, this is critical. People are dying!_

_And convicting Essex would make them not die? You might want to ask yourself if anyone in his right mind would create a virus without creating a cure._

She extended her hand to him. "It was an unexpected pleasure, Mr. Worthington."

Taking the hand, he kissed the air above the back of it. "The pleasure was all mine, Ms. Frost." _Are you telling me there's already a vaccine?_

But she was headed for the door, and he thought she didn't plan to answer. Once she was beyond it, though, she sent back, _And would anyone in his - or her - right mind invest in viral research unless a vaccine were a part of it?_

He forced himself to resist racing after her. Instead, he sent to another mind watching, _Did you get all that, Professor?_

_Yes, indeed. And I believe we now know why they have stock in pharmaceuticals. Essex creates the virus, and after a sufficient amount of time while it reduces the numbers of 'lesser' mutants, he 'invents' the cure. All their investments are so far back, no one would think to suspect them._

_Essex gets to look like a hero, and his stockholders make a shitload of money._

_Unless we can blow the whistle on them, I fear so,_ Xavier replied. _But at least we now know that a cure is possible._

* * *

"No peeking."

"Jean, if I peeked, I'd blast a hole in the wall."

His glasses in her one hand, his elbow in her other, Jean guided a blinded Scott through the halls of the sub-basement towards the hangar. It reminded her of the time immediately after his power had manifested before Hank had perfected the ruby quartz. She and Warren had spent a lot of time guiding Scott by the elbow. He'd never entirely lost his blind-man habits, either - still kept shoes and other items off the floor so he didn't trip without his glasses, and arranged items precisely on the bathroom counter, so he could find them with his eyes shut. And he still read braille. Now, he walked easily down the hall, not feeling his way with his feet, trusting her to take care of him.

And she would; tonight was her gift to him. She'd return what fate had taken away 20 years ago. The professor had spoken of rights, and who had the right to tell, but Xavier didn't have the right to _withhold_ this. Jean loved Scott too much to know and keep it to herself.

Now, she guided him through the big double-doors into the hangar, where the X-jet was already idling. "Is that the plane?" he asked, surprised and trying to reach for his glasses.

She gave them over. "Yup. Come on, flyboy." Then she pulled him across the hangar floor while he tried to put on his glasses one-handed. But at the base of the stairwell, she felt him balk, and turned. "The last time we were on this plane -" he began.

"I'm alive, Scott." She placed her palms on the sides of his face. They were more or less exactly of a height, and she stared into the red pinpoint of his eyes behind the glasses. "I'm alive, and I want to go on a trip, you and me alone."

"It's kinda expensive to take the jet up just for a date."

"Then consider this piloting practice, or getting past our demons, or whatever you want to call it. We can kill a lot of birds with one stone."

"I thought you had a particular restaurant in mind?"

"I do." She headed up the ramp. "It's in Blacksburg."

"Blacksburg?"

"Virginia."

"We're flying to _Virginia_ for _dinner_?"

"Why not?" She looked back over her shoulder, grinning as he climbed up behind her. "It's a pretty rural area in the mountains. I think we can hide the jet without any problem, and I already put your bike on board so we can drive into town. I even packed our bags so we can stay the night if we want to. Come on, Scott," she said, scrunching her nose at him, "do the _unexpected_."

He was shaking his head. "There's unexpected, and then there's completely off the wall."

"There is a method to my madness. Trust me, okay?"

He eyed her a moment, then shrugged and headed for the pilot's seat. "All right. Is the bike secured in the hold?"

"Snug as a bug in a rug."

"Then let's go eat in Virginia."

Private ownership of a stealth jet was illegal, as RAM, or radar absorbant materials, tended to be associated with drug- or gun-running. Thus, Scott couldn't register a flight plan and had to fly high and out of the way of air traffic. This was a problem near cities, as he had to pay very close attention to his own radar to avoid slamming into another jet at speeds that were barely sub-sonic. When Jean flew, she preferred to go slower, and to go _around_ major metropolitan centers, if possible. Scott said that wasted time, but she didn't think it was really about time. It was about _danger_ - the same reason he kept a souped-up bike . . . the charge of adrenaline brought by knowing one's life depended on quick reflexes. Scott didn't take chances about much, having been a slave to chance in his childhood, but in a few things, he liked to gamble - as long as the gamble depended on his _skill_ rather than luck. It was, Jean thought, Scott's way of giving life the finger.

Now, she spent the first 45 minutes watching quietly as he navigated the skies, and wondered what might have happened if he'd been flying when the Air Force jets had caught them outside Boston. Scott had inherited his father's talent in the cockpit, and she suspected those pilots would have had a much harder run for their money, though she didn't think she and Ro had done too badly, considering.

Once they were out of the busy area and he could relax his attention somewhat, she said, "I have a question for the resident philosophy major."

He smiled faintly without looking at her and replied, "The resident philosophy major is listening."

In as calm a tone as she could muster, she asked, "What _am_ I now, do you think? Can I still be called human?" She looked down at her hands, lying palm up in her lap.

The question had clearly caught him off guard and he jerked his head around to stare at her a minute. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You asked me the same thing yourself, back in Alaska, and I couldn't reply except to say I was Jean."

He returned his attention to the board and navigational computers. "And I accepted that as the best explanation we were likely to get."

"I'm not satisfied with it anymore."

"Why not?"

"Because it's not _good enough_," she said, exasperated. "What _am_ I?" For a moment, her own worry leaked into her tone, and he reached over to lay a hand on her knee in wordless comfort. "I mean, I don't seem able to die," she went on. "Does that qualify me as an 'immortal'? Even Logan could die if you cut off his head or dropped him in a vat of acid."

She caught Scott grin briefly, but ignored his morbid sense of humor. "I, however, got washed away by a tidal wave and my original body is rotting somewhere on the bottom of a lake in Canada" - that made him wince, but she ignored it, too - "yet here I sit, in another body I created out of thin air! I read minds without effort; in fact, it takes an effort _not_ to read them, and I tore up the whole _house_ last Sunday, then fixed it all an minute later. I spin clothes as I need them, and the other morning, I made Hank a mug and some coffee with a wave of my hand. What does that make me?"

"A very versatile coffee machine?"

"Scott!" She was hugely irritated, but also struggling not to laugh; he had that effect on her. "I know the rest of them are thinking about these things, worrying about them - but I worry, too. You said to me that the last person who came back from the dead claimed to be the son of God."

"I was _kidding_, Jean."

"And warning me."

After a hesitation, he nodded. "All right - and warning you. As you just said, you'd torn up the house by accident . . . because you didn't listen to the professor." He looked over at her again. "I also told you that a lot of us are dangerous. We learn to deal with it, and we teach the kids to be proud of their powers, not ashamed of them." He shrugged. "So you can do a little more now that the rest of us."

"Scott, I make things out of nothing! That's what _gods_ do."

"No you don't," he replied. "You just said you make things out of the air. That's not _nothing_. You're using air molecules, right? You're transforming those molecules into others?"

Puzzled, she said, "Yes."

"Then that's not _creatio ex nihilio_." He shrugged. "There _is_ a scientific explanation - your TK can alter molecular structures. You've heard the saying, 'Any sufficiently advanced technology seems like magic'? That doesn't mean it _is_ magic. You have limits, Jean, even if you're still figuring out what they are."

He'd obviously been thinking about this since Sunday, too, and she nodded, feeling better. When not acting overprotective, he had a gift for reassuring logic.

* * *

It was a little after seven on Friday evening. Supper was over, half the student body was outside, and the other half was preparing for an evening of games in the den, when a nondescript white Dodge Neon stopped at the front gate and a call was taken in Xavier's office.

A minute later, the gate opened, and inside the mansion, a gloved and gowned Henry McCoy came barreling up from the sub-basement at the professor's summons. Xavier met him in the main hall, and they both exited to await the car on the front porch, along with two of the junior X-Men whom the professor had also summoned.

Rogue pulled at the collar of her uniform, feeling at once self-conscious, proud, and rather ridiculous. When she glanced over at Bobby, he shrugged with his eyebrows. Apparently, he had no more idea what this was about than she did.

They were back on decent speaking terms, and if they still weren't entirely comfortable with each other, they were getting there. She'd learned something about life and love from dating him, even if, ultimately, it hadn't worked out. Then again, at 17, now 18, Rogue hadn't been seeking something permanent, even while she'd reveled in Bobby's attention, proving that she was still attractive, post-mutation.

Some days, she wondered what Bobby had gotten out of it all, but was too insecure to ask.

Now, the professor was speaking to them. "This may come as something of a shock," he warned as the Neon stopped on the circular drive and the driver's door opened. A blue woman stepped out. Then the passenger door opened and a tall, silver-haired man followed.

"You gotta be shitting me!" Rogue snapped before remembering her language. Xavier simply made a tsk-tsk sound.

Yet neither Mystique nor Magneto looked triumphant, or even self-satisfied. Instead, they looked worried, and Magneto bent to move his seat forward, offering a hand to someone in the rear.

St. John emerged. Pyro. And he looked terrible - pale and sweaty. Both Rogue's hands flew to her mouth even has Bobby's jaw dropped. "Oh, no! He's got it, doesn't he - the virus?" Rogue asked.

"I'm afraid he probably does," the professor replied. "They couldn't go to a hospital." He looked up at his students as Magneto and Mystique helped John mount the front steps and Hank descended to assist. "We were the alternative."

Whatever had passed between them all at Alkali, and as much as she detested Magneto and Mystique, Rogue's heart twisted. "Johnny," she called, starting after Hank.

But jaw set, Bobby wasn't following. "Maybe we're the alternative, Professor, but I don't want anything to do with him." And turning, Bobby stalked back inside, slamming the door behind him.

* * *

Home to Virginia Tech, Blacksburg was a thoroughly college town, and the population halved when students left for holidays. Scott avoided the little local airport, finding instead a flat field among the hills in which to land the jet, then they unloaded his motorbike and headed into town.

On Main Street within walking distance of the university, Boudreaux's Cajun Restaurant didn't look particularly ritzy, fronted by concrete and sheet metal with the name in neon over the door along with an alligator. It was nearing nine, and the summer sun was setting. Here in the mountains, it got dark fast. "We'd like a table on the roof," Jean told the hostess. "Near the band stage, if possible."

"They have bands?" Scott asked, interest piqued, and Jean grinned to herself as they followed the hostess upstairs to the rooftop deck. Seated at a little table with a candle and a sprig of flowers in a bud vase, they ordered beer and appetizers - crawdads, jerk chicken, and oysters. These, they nibbled while enjoying the time together away from the demands of real life. At one point, Jean slipped off her sandals to tease Scott's ankle and calf with her toes. He laughed (and blushed) and fenced back with his own foot.

At 10:30, the band came out to set up. Jean watched surreptitiously and swallowed her smile. Scott was eating his Chocolate Bomb dessert and not paying attention. (The man could put away a remarkable amount of food for someone as thin as he was, but his accelerated metabolism meant that he processed calories at a fantastic rate.)

The band's instrumentation included a fiddle and mandolin player, a guitar, an upright bass, drums, and a Dobro. The blond fellow with the Dobro stepped up to the mic. "Good evening and welcome to Boudreaux's on this hot and sticky Virginia night. I'm Alex Blanding, and we're Blanding's Landing. We'll be here till one with a little traditional bluegrass, a little new grass, and some songs in between. We just hope you have as much fun listening as we do playing." Then turning his head, he called out, "One, two, three, four -" And they set off on something fast and all-instrumental. He seemed talented at Dobro, though Jean was no real connoisseur.

Scott had shifted in his seat, a small frown spearing his brow as he watched the band. "Weird," he said. "For a minute, that guy sounded just like my dad."

And now Jean couldn't hold back her smile anymore. It broke wide and full across her face. "I'm not surprised ... since that's your brother."

He couldn't have looked more poleaxed if she'd hit him upside the head with a two-by-four.

* * *

**Notes:** In the comics, Alex's original adoptive family was named Blanding, and while he was born in Honolulu, he didn't grow up there. I've kept some elements of the comics and tweaked others. Many thanks to Domenika for her exhaustive assistance in "designing" Alex in movieverse, and for requesting him in the first place, and to ridesandruns for pinch-hitting on editing.


	30. Personal Journal: Lines in the Sand

**_From Scott Summers' Personal Journal:_ **

Jean had meant well. And she did what she did because she loves me. Yet springing me on Alex with no warning was very nearly catastrophic.

As soon as she told me who he was, I wanted to leap up and grab hold of him . . . or leap up and run away. I was just a mess of conflicted feelings.

_Take care of Alex. You're all he has._

They'd been almost my mother's last words as she'd bound Alex to me and shoved us both out the hatch in our parachute. But the plane had been going down fast, our jump barely high enough to be safe, and the chute damaged by burning debris. We'd come down hard, and instead of taking care of him, I'd wound up in a coma, suffering brain damage. He was adopted before I woke and his records sealed, and I'd never found out what had become of him beyond that. Occasionally, the boy inside me felt guilty that I'd failed our mother, but the man recognized it had been out of my hands. For a while, I'd hoped that when he came of age, he might try to contact me via Nebraska's department of child protective services, but he never had. I had no idea if that were because he didn't know it was possible, or because he wasn't interested. In any case, there was nothing I could do about it, and if I still wondered about him sometimes, I'd stopped waiting for him to turn up on my doorstep.

To see him now, all grown up and looking like a blonder, prettier version of our father, rocked me to my core.

Being forced to wait through his first set gave me time to gather my wits, and when the band took a break a little after midnight, I approached the stage with hands shoved deep in pockets, torn between eagerness and terror. Jean trailed me. Seated on a stool, Alex looked up from adjusting something on his Dobro. He was sweating, his white t-shirt damp with it. "Hi," I said, at a loss and wondering if I should have waited until after they were all done for the evening.

"Hi," he responded.

"You're good." And he was.

He gave a little shrug with one shoulder. "Thanks. But I'm no threat to Jerry Douglas yet." He had a slight Southern drawl, more the kind one picks up from living in an area than from being raised there.

"Most people aren't," I replied.

"We came a long way to see you play," Jean said, probably figuring I'd never get around to explaining if left to my own devices.

"Oh?" he asked, curious. "Where from?"

"New York."

He almost dropped his glass-bottle slide. "New York! How on earth - I mean, where did you hear about Blanding's Landing in _New York_ ?"

"It's a long story," she said, grinning and leaning forward to offer him her hand even as a young woman with green hair joined him. I'd seen her at the sound board earlier and wondered if the hair came from a bottle or her genes. She dressed rather punk to be into bluegrass, but people had unexpected tastes.

Now, Alex shook Jean's hand as he said, "This is Lorna." His free arm around her shoulders and the way she leaned into him said she was his girl even if he didn't specify. "Lorna, these guys came from _New York_ to hear us."

"To hear _you_ ," Jean corrected, still smiling. "I'm Jean Grey and this -" she gestured to me as I still stood, hands in pockets, paralyzed by possibility. "This is _Scott Summers_ ."

Alex blinked, clearly making no connections with the name, though also clearly aware he was expected to. The anticlimax would have been funny, had it been less embarrassing. Taking pity on him, I said, "I'm your brother, Alex."

He got it then, though he had no idea how to reply, opening and shutting his mouth like a beached fish. The green-haired girl appeared completely taken aback, and Jean looked pleased, like a mother whose surprise party has actually succeeded in surprising. "But you're not . . . you can't be . . . you _died_ ," Alex said, running a hand into his hair and tugging.

"I was in a coma for a while after the accident," I explained. "When I woke, you'd already been adopted. I wasn't. I had brain damage." That last came out more bitter than I'd intended.

He picked up on the implied censure, and his face hardened. "I don't have a brother, and my last name isn't Summers. It's Blanding, the same as the people who took me in and raised me when I needed a family, since my birth parents couldn't be _bothered_ to make a will. I obviously didn't mean much to them."

Jean's expression transformed from smug to shocked, and my anger sparked again, in part because I'd harbored the same resentment towards our parents at times, and felt guilty for it. Impelled to defend them now, I said, "They were in the process of making a new will. Don't blame Dad for the accident, or what happened after."

"Why not? Wasn't it his fault? And like I said, he's not my 'dad.'" He turned his back. "Come on, Lorna."

"Wait!" Jean said, propelled by desperation at the unexpected results of her orchestrated reunion. "You can't - He's your _brother_ , Alex. Don't you want to know about your birth family?"

"Not really," Alex said, turning. "Not every adoptee does. I won't snub the people who raised me in order to chase after people I don't even remember. That'd be spitting in the face of everything my parents - my _real_ parents - gave me."

And he stalked off stage to join the other members of his band inside at the bar. Lorna regarded me a moment longer, her expression almost sympathetic, then she followed. I watched, my calm cracking and falling away, leaving me stunned again.

"Oh, Scott," Jean whispered, tears in her eyes as she hugged me. I shoved her away and stalked off, too. She followed like a dog with its tail between its legs, and silently got on the bike behind me. We'd put our bags on earlier, assuming we'd stay the night in town, and now I buzzed down the nearly empty Main Street, seeking a hotel. We wound up at a Comfort Inn, though we could have afforded better. I just wanted a room, and whatever my present bank account showed, I'd come from America's middle class; $70 a night still seemed to me like too much to pay for a bed.

Once in our room, I dumped our bags on the floor, then turned to face her. "Explain."

"Explain what?" But it came out small and quiet, not defiant.

"The whole damn thing - how you knew where he was, and who he was . . . everything."

So she told me about her discovery in Cerebro, and how the professor had known already, but had admonished her not to tell me, at which point her tone took back some of its habitual fire. "He didn't have the _right_ to keep that from you."

"And you had the right to drag me down here and drop me in Alex's lap without asking either of us?"

"I wanted to surprise you!" she said, hands spread helplessly. "I didn't know he'd react that way!"

And my rage exploded. "No, Jean! You didn't _think_ is what you didn't do! If you'd actually _thought_ about it, you might have considered why Xavier never told me!"

"But aren't you mad at him?" she asked, incredulous. "He lied to you!"

"He didn't lie to me, exactly," I said, turning away. "And I am mad at him - I'm mad that he didn't trust me enough to tell me without assuming I'd come flying down here even if Alex didn't want me in his life."

Abruptly, I sat down on the cheap floral bedspread and rested my elbows on my knees, letting my head hang. She didn't say anything, and the truth was, I probably would have come flying down here. I'd at least have wanted to see him, but whether I could've left it at that, even I didn't know. It might have taken witnessing the rejection on his face to realize he _didn't want me. _ That wasn't Jean's fault. But - "Jean, you're a telepath. Why didn't you look in his head and see what he felt about me?"

"I did," she said softly, sitting down on the room's other bed. They'd only had doubles left, and to be honest, when I'd signed the card, I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to sleep in the same bed as her tonight. "I didn't see anything about you at all."

"Maybe that should have been a clue."

"I just . . . I wanted to _fix_ things." She sounded ready to cry, but I had no sympathy to spare at the moment.

"Next time, try asking first. And listen to the professor. He's been dealing with lines in the sand for decades." I raised my head to look at her. "Just because you _can_ do something doesn't mean you should."

Face stark, she rose and headed for the bathroom. I went outside for a smoke. When I came back, she was still in the bathroom. Pulling off my shirt and shucking my jeans, I got into bed, turned off the light, and pretended to be asleep when she finally came out. If she knew I wasn't, she didn't let on.

Unsurprisingly, I couldn't get to sleep, just lay there replaying in my head the conversation earlier like reruns of a train wreck as I listened to the hum of the air conditioner and Jean's breathing beside me. Sometimes I looked at the clock, but mostly, I didn't want to know what time it was.

The bedside phone rang somewhere after 3:30. It happened to be on my side, so I fumbled for the receiver in the dark. "Hello?" I said.

"Is this Scott Summers?"

It was a woman's voice, and I sat up, heard Jean turn over beside me. "This is Scott."

"Oh, good, I found you." The voice was relieved. "I'm sorry it's so late, but this is Lorna - Alex's girlfriend? Um, listen, you caught him by surprise earlier, and he has a temper sometimes. Could you come to Joe's Diner? It's on Main Street, not too hard to find and open all night. We need to talk."

"Just you and me?"

"No, I mean you and Alex, mostly."

"Does he want to do this?"

"Yes and no. But I pointed out he couldn't just let you go home and maybe never see you again. Whatever happened after that accident, it's not your fault."

I suppressed saying anything in defense of our parents, said instead, "I don't want to come busting into his life if he isn't interested -"

"He's just confused. This brought up some painful memories, and some uncomfortable questions. He called his sister earlier, then his parents, and yeah, I think he's ready to talk to you again."

I rubbed my eyes under the glasses. "Okay. I'll be there. And Lorna, no offense, but could Alex and I do this alone, nobody else there?"

She hesitated, then said, "Yeah, all right. Just remember, he has a temper. He'll say one thing, then ten minutes later, change his mind. That's just how he is."

Unaccountably, this made me smile. "He was like that when he was little, too."

"Really?" She seemed intrigued for a moment, then her tone returned to business. "So - give him twenty minutes, and he'll be down there."

"You're _sure_ he wants to do this . . . "

"Yes."

"So why are _you_ calling?"

I could hear the smile in her voice. "Because he's a stubborn SOB. I hope to see you again sometime, Scott." And she hung up.

Jean was lying on her back, watching me. The whites of her eyes caught the dim glow of street lights sneaking in around the heavy window shades. "From what you said, I assume you don't want me to go with you, either?"

"No." It came out short and harsh. Relenting, I reached over to lay a hand on her arm. "I can't say I'm not still angry, but that's not why I want to do this alone."

"Okay," she replied.

Rising in the dark, I felt around for my clothes. "One thing - you said you saw him in Cerebro and he felt familiar. Is he a mutant, too?"

"Yes."

"Does he know that?"

A pause, then she admitted, "I don't know. I was more interested in figuring out if he knew about you."

"What about Lorna? She has green hair. Is that punk or is that an X-gene?"

"I have no idea about Lorna. I didn't probe her. I really do try _not_ to do that casually. All I can say is she was upset for Alex earlier, but also irritated at him; I didn't try to go any deeper than that."

"Okay," I said, pulling on a spare shirt, then I bent to kiss her, hitting her nose rather than her lips in the dark. As I'd told her, I was still angry, but we'd been angry at each other before. I'd get over it. Then I grabbed my bike keys and headed out.

As Lorna had promised, the place wasn't hard to find, and looked like most any college diner - lots of chrome, vinyl, and Formica. At almost four in the morning, the patrons were largely early-shift people on their way to work, rather than college students trying to sober up after a bar tour. It was seat-yourself, but I decided to wait so Alex could find me. He arrived about five minutes after I did, on a bike, too, though of the pedal variety. Entering, he eyed my motorcycle helmet but didn't comment.

I didn't know what to say or how to greet him. An embrace was out of the question, even if I'd been the touchy-feely sort, but a handshake seemed unduly formal. I tried smiling. "Hello, little brother."

He nodded back, cautiously. "I think the 'little' applies only to age." Which was true. Athletic and tan, he must have been four inches taller than me, and had plenty of muscle in both chest and legs. The bike helmet and biking shorts suggested he rode more than just to class. "If you don't mind," he added, "I'd rather you just call me Alex."

It wasn't friendly, but also not especially harsh, and I recalled Lorna's warning that he sometimes said things about which he later changed his mind. "Fair enough," I replied, then gestured out to the restaurant. "You want to get a seat?"

When we'd ordered - food for him and coffee for us both - he launched into an explanation. "I talked to Mom. She said she never told me you were dead, and she doesn't know where I got that from, thinks maybe I saw you unconscious in the hospital and assumed you were dead because I was too little to understand. Kids invent weird theories, even if you tell them otherwise. So then I asked why they'd never talked to me about you, and she said it was because I'd never asked. After the accident, I was pretty traumatized for almost a year, and she says I dealt with it mostly by suppressing it. They didn't want to mess with whatever worked." He'd said all this while staring at the tabletop, but now looked up. "I have no real reason to doubt any of that. She didn't sound like she was covering anything up."

The coffee had arrived and I sipped it, not bothering to point out that I'd never accused anyone of covering up anything; that must be Alex's concern.

"Lorna's adopted, too," Alex went on, ignoring his own coffee. "That's kinda how we first got together. Well, that and the rocks. But she's always wanted to find out who her birth parents were, while I never did. I mean, I already knew who they _were_ , at least in general, and maybe that's why I wasn't curious. Her mom gave her up at birth, and she wants to know why. Me, I know what happened, and I never wanted the Blandings to think I didn't appreciate everything they've done for me. Besides, I thought you were dead, so I didn't see much point. They never - they never encouraged me to look. Looking back now, I realize that I got that whole attitude from them. They always told me I was just as much theirs as Haley was - Haley's their biological daughter - and they didn't want me to feel lesser, and that blood didn't make family. I do believe that. Still . . . ." He trailed off, as if unwilling or unable to complete the thought.

"But now you're wondering," I said quietly, "if they guilted you into not looking for me."

"No." He gulped the coffee. "Maybe. I don't know." Then he stared across the table at me. "How'd you know I was thinking that?"

I smiled faintly. "I just listened." He frowned, probably annoyed at my amusement. "Alex," I said, "look, I don't know if you have any interest in getting to know me, but" - I hesitated; this bared my heart - "I'd like to get to know you. We'll never be like brothers who grew up together, but I'd like to think maybe we could be friends. I've wondered about you - what happened to you - for a long time. All I knew was that you'd been adopted."

His frown deepened. "So how'd you find me down here, then?"

I hesitated again. How much should I say? Jean might have found him by accident, but she'd violated his privacy in bringing me here. She'd done it because she wanted to make us happy, but that didn't change the fact she'd exploited information normal people wouldn't have had, and I doubted he'd take it well. "Chance," I said now. "Jean, my fiance, ran across you" - I didn't elaborate on how - "and she looked up when your band would be playing, then brought me. I didn't know what it was all about until you got up on stage last night. She probably should have asked first, but she wanted to surprise us. She likes surprises, and I don't think it ever occurred to her that we might not be overjoyed."

He was nodding, taking what I'd said at face value, though I suspected he'd have questions once he had time to think about it more. "So, um, what do you do, anyway? I don't know anything about you."

I had no intention of telling him the full story of my life, even if we'd had time. "I went through the foster care system, eventually wound up in New York and became the ward of a man named Charles Xavier. He runs a private school there. That's where I met Jean. I was a student first, then later a teacher - math - but Xavier just recently went on partial retirement and named me headmaster. So in short, I'm a high school principal these days. How about you? Are you in Blacksburg to go to school? Or are you trying to make a go of it in music?"

"The band's just a hobby. I'm getting a master's in geosciences - I have this thing about rocks." His grin was lopsided.

So we talked until dawn, slowly putting together the pieces of our lives since the last time we'd seen each other on June 22,nd 1986. As we were leaving (I paid, since I wasn't a starving grad student), we exchanged email addresses, and I invited him to come up to the school sometime so I could show him the city, but he confessed he wasn't much of a city boy. I didn't think he'd be up any time soon. As we exited, he pointed to the glasses and asked the inevitable. I was only surprised that it had taken him so long. "You've been wearing those all night, even in the dark. What's up with that?"

I could have dodged the question, but didn't want to. "I'm a mutant," I said. "The brain damage from the accident means my power doesn't work quite right, so I have to wear the glasses." I watched his reaction carefully.

It was startled - but not overly alarmed. "A mutant, huh? Do you catch a lot of flak for it?"

"Sometimes."

"Doesn't your school board give you a hard time about being a mutant principal?"

"Since we're a private school, we have a board of regents instead, and no, they don't." I hesitated, then told the rest of it. I might have hedged in telling him what Jean could do, and I wasn't about to try to explain the X-Men, but I didn't want to hide everything. "The school I run is _for_ mutants, Alex. A lot of our students wound up there because they got kicked out of their homes and had nowhere else to go. We teach them how to manage their powers, along with some math and English and history."

He was watching me with great interest. "You mean you can teach that? How to, uh, manage a power? There are places that teach that?"

I smiled; I didn't think his question was generic, but didn't want to push. "Yes. Some mutations are mostly benign, but a few are dangerous, and in my experience, most of us _don't_ want to hurt other people. So we help mutant kids to understand themselves, and to manage what they can do. My fiance, Jean, is a specialist in mutant genetics, in fact." I probably should have been more cautious about Jean's identity, but as with the school, I didn't want to lie, and Jean had already introduced herself by name earlier without him making any connections to her speech before the Senate, much less her "death." I doubted C-SPAN was his favorite channel.

"Is, um, she a mutant, too?"

"Yes."

"So what do you, uh, do? What's your power?"

"My eyes emit something called a 'force blast.' Basically, I punch holes in things. Big holes. Without the glasses, I could bore through a mountain." His eyes widened. "And here's something for the rock guy; my beams will destroy anything . . . except rose quartz. We have no idea why that mineral dissipates the beams, but it does, so these" - I tapped the glasses - "are made of ruby quartz, a related synthetic."

His interest really was piqued now. "Honest? I'd ask to look at them, but I doubt that'd be a good idea if you punch holes in mountains without them."

Grinning wryly, I shut my eyes, taking off the glasses to hand them over. The gesture was as much symbolic as to satisfy his curiosity. "Here. Just don't get fingerprints on them."

I felt him take them from my hand - the first time we'd touched in 20 years. He was silent while he looked them over, and I could hear that traffic on the street beyond had started to pick up as the day began. Somewhere, a dog was barking. After a minute, he put them back in my hand and I returned them to my face. "I'll do some digging around on rose quartz for you," he said. "See if I can find out anything interesting."

"Sure," I said. I didn't tell him that I'd already dug quite a lot. It gave the geoscientist something to occupy himself, and gave us a connection, maybe, beyond the same parents and a nightmare memory.


	31. Devil at the Door

Jean didn't go to sleep after Scott had left, but sat in the middle of their hotel-room bed in the dark, arms around her drawn-up knees, picking at her toenails, and weeping. Her mother had often admonished her that it wasn't ladylike (or hygienic) to pick her toenails, but for whatever reason, that habit had been her long-time stress relief. With the lights off and the dark pressing heavy around her like winter blankets, she couldn't see what she was doing, and suspected she'd torn down to the quick and was bleeding on the bleached-white sheets. She could have healed herself, but didn't bother. Periodically, she broke into new sobs, struggling to suppress the noise. Why, she couldn't have said. Scott wasn't there, and no one occupied the rooms to either side of theirs. Pride, she supposed.

At one point, she got up and went into the bathroom to wipe her eyes and pee. The face staring back was swollen, ugly, and blotched. She'd never cried well, like some girls, and now that she was in her thirties, her skin had lost its elasticity. She could've fixed that, just as she could have healed her bleeding feet, but refused. She wasn't a girl, and didn't want to look like one.

It wasn't long after she returned to bed that she felt the tentative touch of the professor's mind. _Jean? Sorry to disturb you at this hour . . . . _ Then his mental voice trailed off in shock as he registered where she was - and what she'd done.

He hadn't come snooping; she'd told him that she and Scott were going away for the weekend and taking the plane. Accepting her plans at face value, he'd cheerfully agreed. "The both of you need some time alone." And she'd been so irritated over the Alex deception that she hadn't felt the least guilty at deceiving him, in turn, for this. But the nature of communication between two telepaths went beyond organized thoughts, and there was no deception now.

His initial shock transformed immediately into cold fury

_You do not have the right to make others' choices for them, whatever you think of those choices. If you take away their free will because you think you know what's 'best' for them, then you make yourself either their parent, or their god, and you are_ neither_. You are a foolish, over-confident young woman._

_I wanted them to be together. They both lost so much -_

_No,_ Scott _lost so much,_ the professor corrected_. _ _You were not thinking about Alex at all except insofar as what he could give to Scott. That turns him into a utility, not a human being with his own rights and wishes. As much as you may love Scott, you may_ not _reduce his brother to a tool._

_But you never even_ tried _to contact him! You never even_ tried _to find out if he really didn't want Scott or -_

_I have kept my eye on Alexander Summers-cum-Blanding ever since he manifested But I took time to investigate, to learn not just who he was related to, but who he_ was. _And I respected that, whether or not I agreed. Other people are not our toys. They have their own dreams and wishes, even their own errors and misunderstandings. I have waited patiently, and worked subtly, to bring Alex to a point that he was ready to rediscover his brother - and to_ want _to do so. By rushing both he and Scott into this, you've caused Scott deep pain, and brought Alex to a crisis of decision. He is now forced to acknowledge Scott, and if he may eventually come to terms with that, he will_ always _resent it._

Jean hadn't even thought of that. _Should I tell him the truth, so he resents me, and not Scott?_

_Absolutely not,_ Xavier replied, _at least, not right now. First, it won't make him not resent Scott, and second, it will only anger him further. But yes - at some point, Jean, it is your_ responsibility_to tell him how you found him. And given Alexander's exceptional intelligence, I don't think it will be too long before he's asking the obvious questions himself._

There was a pause, then she asked, _What did you contact me about?_

_You need to come home as soon as Scott returns. We have a . . . situation, I'm afraid. _ _Erik and Raven arrived at the mansion last night - they brought St. John. He has the virus._

Jean had no immediate reply beyond quiet horror. Then, she asked, _He's in isolation?_

_Yes, as are both Raven and Erik for the moment, until we can determine for certain whether they've also contracted it. Henry is running tests now; he said he should know something by this afternoon or evening._

Jean tried to search her memory for what she knew of St. John's records, but kept coming up blank; it must be part of what she'd lost. _Charles - has Hank checked Johnny's DNA type?_

There was a pause, which told her what she feared. _He has the earlier-type X-gene - as has Erik, of course. _ That was deceptively calm; Jean knew how Charles must worry. _Raven's, apparently, is second-generation._

_Do they know what all that means?_

_They do - at least Raven and Erik do. They've not told St. John, and neither has Hank._

Jean did a flash check on Scott's whereabouts and found him already back in the parking lot. _Scott's here. We'll be home as soon as we can get to the plane._

_Jean - for the moment, don't tell Scott that Erik has come. I'll tell him when he gets back._

Jean didn't like that deception, but she had to admit - at that moment - she was hardly in a position to criticize his judgment. _All right. But you can't keep it from him._

_I don't plan to,_ Xavier replied, a touch irritably. _I would simply prefer to tell him face-to-face, and to tell him myself._

_I don't think he's very happy with you about the Alex thing._

_We shall need to discuss that, as well._

The hotel room door opened and Scott entered, looking tired, but _feeling_ calm. _We'll see you soon,_ Jean sent, and closed the telepathic link. To Scott, she said, "I'm sorry, hon, but the professor just contacted me. We have to go back. St. John's at the mansion. He's got the virus."

Scott's head jerked up. "What's he doing at the mansion instead of a hospital?"

"I think he's probably afraid he wouldn't get proper treatment." She didn't add that the two who'd brought him were wanted by the FBI.

Scott sighed and ran a hand into his hair. "Do I have time to shower?"

"Yes, you do." She didn't add that, at the moment, there was nothing she and Hank could do for John besides keep him comfortable and hope against hope that he defied the odds.

* * *

Hank took a breakfast break after spending most of the night in the medlab. St. John's condition had deteriorated overnight, though Hank hoped fluids would stabilize him. Even so, and being brutally honest, he didn't know how long the boy could hold out. He'd told Charles they should probably contact John's family, but Charles had said John had none, or none that acknowledged him anyway. He'd added that John's closest friend - previously - had been Bobby Drake.

It was very early, the sun just up and its light falling golden through the row of windows along one wall of the dining room. As Hank entered, he found it mostly empty - but two people in particular caught his attention. One was Logan, dressed in bike leathers and looking as if he'd just arrived from the road. He hovered over the breakfast spread on the sideboard, filling a plate. At Hank's step, he glanced around, nodding once, then returned his attention to the food.

The other individual to catch Hank's eye was the Drake boy. He sat in a corner, hunched over a mug, ignoring the handful of others in the hall. Hank didn't know Bobby well, but would have bet that shortly before 6 a.m. wasn't a normal rising time for him. Logan had clearly noticed Drake, too, and Hank expected him to join the boy, as they'd seemed to enjoy an improbable attachment the previous fall, but Logan just took his plate and headed out. "Need to talk to Chuck," he said as he passed Hank at the sideboard, startling Hank as much for troubling to explain where he was going, as for the nickname given the professor. (Chuck! Hank would have loved to see Charles' face when he first heard that.)

In any case, Hank decided that perhaps he should make an effort to talk to Bobby, so he crossed the dining hall and seated himself at the boy's table in the rear corner. The scrape of the chair as he pulled it out sounded loud in the subdued quiet. "Good morning, Mr. Drake."

Bobby eyed him, sipping coffee. "You think I want to know how Johnny is? Well, I don't."

Hank didn't reply, simply put butter on his toast.

"He left, you know. After everything the professor did for him, gave him - he just fucking _abandoned_ us for _Magneto_ . And don't tell me to watch my language."

"I wouldn't dream of it. I am not your father."

Silence reigned while Hank ate and Bobby glared out at the room. "Rogue went down there last night, didn't she? He was my roommate, but I guess _she_ must've really _missed_ him."

Hank glanced up from his scrambled eggs and sausage. "She came down, yes, and they talked. Though it occurs to me that perhaps she was able to do so because, in fact, she missed him _less_."

Managing to look both irritated and startled at once, Bobby asked, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Simply that because she was less hurt by his defection, she can forgive him more easily. After all, and if you remember, it was _Scott_ who was angriest at Jean after her 'death.'"

Bobby's expression was stark. "It wasn't like that between us!"

"Like what?" Hank asked curiously, taking a bite of egg.

"Like . . . you know . . . _that_. Scott and Dr. Grey were _engaged_ ."

"Mr. Drake, I was not implying that you and St. John were engaged." His lips tipped up at the boy's predictably mortified expression. "Although that might bother me less than it seems to bother you. All I meant to imply was that because Scott felt closest to Jean, he was the most furious at what he believed to be her willful suicide. Anger is an expression of deep hurt."

"We were just friends, Johnny and me - roomies."

"And you think Scott would have been any less angry if it had been Warren instead of Jean who he believed to have abandoned him?"

The boy dropped his eyes and played with a damp circle left by steam from the bottom of his coffee cup, turning the condensation to frost like a lace doily on dark Formica. "What's up with that, anyway? Mr. Worthington's not, like, ever married, and he hung around here a lot even before Dr. Grey died, but afterwards, he was practically glued to Scott. And the way he looks at him . . . I know it's none of my business, but -"

"That is correct; it's none of your business." Yet Hank's admonition wasn't cold, and he set down his fork to bend forward and catch the boy's eyes. "The bonds of human affection are often more complex than Hollywood would have us believe. And in any case, I believe it's _your_ feelings for St. John that you are trying to sort out. May I suggest that, first, loving your friend isn't the same thing as being attracted to him. And second, as I'm sure you know, he has no family - and the medlab can be rather lonely. I believe I overheard him ask Rogue about a certain videogame?"

Bobby rolled his eyes. "_Halo 2_ - yeah. We used to waste some serious time with that one."

Another pause came while Hank debated internally, but then he said, "Bobby, as his friend - and perhaps as close to family as he has - you should know. St. John's X-gene is of the _earlier_ type."

Bobby's hand froze with the coffee mug halfway to his mouth - literally froze. The liquid inside the cup iced up and cracked. "What? You mean - but what Dr. Grey said . . . ."

Hank simply nodded.

"Does he _know_ ?"

"Not yet."

Abruptly, Bobby got to his feet. "I'll go look for _Halo_, see if I can get an Xbox down there."

"Bobby!" Hank called before the boy could walk away. "Do take precautions. You are not as susceptible - nonetheless."

Bobby just nodded.

* * *

It was a silly accident. Such things usually were.

Scott and Jean had secured Scott's bike in the hold, then mounted the stairs into the Blackbird. Jean levitated their bags, but Scott - stubbornly - shouldered his backpack himself. It slid down his shoulder as he climbed, and he grabbed for it, knocking his glasses askew. Red lanced out, severing the right side of the hydraulic stair lift, which swung left. Scott fell with the stairs, landing hard on his side. Jean heard a bone snap, and he bellowed, "Shit!" as he lay flat on his back on the grass, his left arm pressed to his side, teeth gritted. "I think it's broken. Dammit!"

Jean's reaction was as much instinct as thought. _Reaching_ , she rewove the stairwell into one piece even as she leapt down beside Scott. "Don't move." She was as worried about his back as his arm. But the moment she touched him, she _knew_ his back was okay. The arm, however, wasn't - broken in three places. It hung at an ugly angle.

_You did it for Jones,_ she told herself. Kitty had said so.

Her TK slid out under the muscle and along the snapped bone, tweaked -

"Ow!"

- knit, and calcified.

It took only seconds.

Scott's expression was . . . startled. "It's not broken now," she told him as her TK soothed the angry, bruised tissue and muscle to reduce the start of any swelling.

"What did you _do_ ?"

She smiled as she helped him sit up. "That," she said, "is the upside of my powers. Apparently, it's not just me I can heal." She blushed. "I found out by accident - literally. When I was in Cerebro, I dropped a table on Jones' leg, broke it, then fixed it as I was fixing everything else. I didn't even realize I'd done it till later."

He stared. "Jean - "

"I know. I've . . . thought about it. A little. Well, a lot. Kind of a lot." She was blushing at her own equivocating. "I think about it, then try not to, then think about it again." She frowned at her hands. "I can . . . _feel_ . . . parts of the body. I guess that's what you get when you combine a medical degree with enhanced TK. So you if break a bone, I can put it back the way it was."

He was silent a long while, studying her face. She couldn't look at him. Finally, he asked, "What else could you fix?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "That's what I've been wondering." She looked up finally, but his face was classic Scott Impassive. "What _can_ I fix?" she asked back.

"Bones, obviously."

"Yes, obviously." Reaching out, she brushed a thumb over his forehead. "I've wondered," she began, but didn't go on.

"Wondered what?" He sounded as much afraid as curious.

"Your eyes. Or really, your _brain_. Could I fix that?"

He was silent a long time, then said, "It's not a bone, Jean."

"I know. That's why I didn't suggest it. But I built a whole _body_ for myself, brain and all . . . ."

"That was yours. You knew how it should feel. You don't know how _I_ should feel . . . ."

"I'm aware of that." Then abruptly, she got to her feet and offered him a hand up. He took it and stood, too. "I fixed your arm. That was easy. I won't try to fix your head - not now." She'd learned her lesson about meddling without permission. "But will you at least let me look into it? I wouldn't do anything without consulting you and laying out all the risks - just like a surgical procedure."

"Telekinetic surgery."

"Essentially . . . yes." She nodded, pleased with that comparison. "It's not magic. You said, flying down here, that any really advanced technology can seem like magic - but that doesn't mean it _is_. I'm a medical doctor, and now I have this extra skill - but I can use it _because_ of what I know. Just like Charles is a telepath, but he has a psychology degree, too. I'm still your physician, Scott; I just have a few extra tricks in my bag now. And I might be able to put right what broke in your brain twenty years ago."

Her logic seemed to reassure him. "All right. But I think you're going to have more important things on your plate than fixing my head."

"Maybe," she said. But she couldn't do much for John. Perhaps she could offset that impotence by helping Scott.

* * *

"Do you think he's gonna die?" Kitty asked Piotr. Word of St. John's arrival had spread rapidly, as had the _reason_ for that arrival, and fear had spiked sharply at Xavier's. Some students had even expressed (softly) the opinion that St. John, Magneto, and Mystique should never have been allowed past the front gate. Kitty wasn't sure she didn't agree, and wondered what Pete thought.

Piotr glanced up from where he was sketching on the drafting table the professor had gotten for him, set up near the window for light. "I hope he doesn't," he said, then returned to his picture.

Sitting on Piotr's bed, Kitty rested her chin on her drawn up knees and watched Piotr work, the arc of his arm holding a pencil, steady, slow, thoughtful. There was, she thought, as much beauty in the artist as in the art, though it would have embarrassed him had she said so.

Now that Piotr and Bobby were no longer students, they'd been moved into a room on the third floor where the other adults were, but Kitty thought that had been done mostly to get Bobby out of the room he'd shared with St. John. Rogue and Jubilee still shared Kitty's room, though Kitty had been spending more time of late in Pete's. Her roommates teased her, but no one teased Pete - and not because they were afraid of him. He just didn't invite ridicule, however affectionate.

Now, he set down his charcoal pencil and walked over to sink beside her on the bed. "What is worrying you, Katya?"

"I don't know," she said. "Nothing really. Everything."

"Katya -" He started to touch her hair or shoulder, perhaps in comfort, but broke off before his hand connected. Rising, he returned to his drafting board, offering her comfortable quiet instead.

And when, exactly, had her Russian nickname stuck? She wasn't sure, but she liked it. Earlier that summer, she'd asked him to teach her his native language. "It might be good to have another for college," she'd explained, though she suspected he knew college had little to do with it. It just gave her an excuse to spend time with him, and gave him something at which he was better than she was. She still hadn't forgotten how poorly he'd spoken of himself, the previous fall. So now, he sketched and she stretched out on his bed, flipping through 3x5 cards with Russian words on them, trying to take her mind off their former classmate in the sub-basement medlab.

* * *

"Thank you for returning, Logan."

Logan just shrugged as he plopped down in one of the high-backed leather chairs before Xavier's desk. "Was kinda headed back anyway," he confessed. He'd gotten Xavier's telepathic message the evening before, and had cut short his tooling about Ontario to return south. "How's the kid?"

"Hank tells me he is holding his own yet. Unfortunately, his X-gene is of the earlier type, which doesn't bode well for his prospects." And Xavier filled Logan in on what Jean and Hank had told them all earlier that week. Logan listened quietly, suppressing his rage at the news that the virus had been engineered. He thought he understood now why Xavier had called him back.

"You might need me to help play nurse."

Xavier sighed and motored out from behind the desk so they were more on a level. "I sincerely hope not."

"But."

"But. We are being very careful, but it may spread, yes."

Nodding, Logan got to his feet. "Let me get back up to my room, catch a shower and change. Then I'll head down to see the kid, and check with Hank, get him to show me a few things. In case."

"Thank you," Xavier said sincerely. "I am, myself, headed to the hangar to meet Scott and Jean."

He didn't look happy, Logan thought. "Where'd they go?" And in the plane?

"Somewhere Jean wasn't supposed to take them."

Logan chewed on that along with the unlit cigar he'd stuck between his teeth. "I heard what she did to the house," he said. "Ran into the Elf earlier. He told me."

"Elf?"

"Kurt."

Charles chuckled as he motored out the office door that Logan held open. "I suppose that is better than 'demon.'" Logan just grunted. "And yes, we had an . . . incident . . . last Sunday. Jean learned her lesson."

Logan raised an eyebrow. "Did she?" he asked, before heading up the hall towards the grand staircase.

* * *

Xavier was waiting in the hangar when Jean and Scott returned late Saturday morning. Jean could barely meet his eyes. Scott, however, bore no guilt. Stalking across the hanger floor, he met his mentor-cum-father near the doors and demanded, "How long have you known?"

"Since Alex manifested - rather late, actually. He was 17. I'd hoped he'd contact you himself, at 18, but he didn't. His loyalty to his adoptive family had something to do with that, I think."

Scott nodded. "It did. We talked - early this morning." Scott tilted his head. He appeared very cool, but Jean knew it was a front. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Why didn't I trust you, you mean?" Xavier asked, cutting right to the chase.

"Yes."

"What would you have done?"

And Scott's controlled temper exploded. "I don't fucking know! But you could at least have _trusted_ me, professor. I'm not a kid anymore. I'm an _adult_ , dammit." He was pacing, but now stopped and swung around. "If you'd leveled with me - told me about him, what had happened, and his uncertainties - don't you think I'd have _respected_ that?"

"Would you?" It was neither a challenge nor a defense, but a simple question.

Scott spun away and paced again. Standing off to the side, Jean watched and kept quiet. "Yes. I'd have wanted to see him, but, yes, I'd have respected his boundaries." He stopped again and turned to glare. "I _respect boundaries_, sir."

"Would you have believed in them, though?" Another question.

Scott couldn't answer; she could see his jaw clench in frustration. "I'd like to think so," he replied finally.

Xavier bowed his head. "I'm sorry," he said simply. "I've been working towards reuniting the two of you, but these things take time. I didn't want you to meet until Alex was willing to accept you." Xavier's expression was wry. "I would rather things go well for you than poorly. I didn't want you hurt again, Scott."

Scott seemed to accept that - both the apology and the explanation, and Jean felt tears prick. As angry as she'd been at the professor, she really hadn't wanted to drive a wedge between Scott and him. Scott was the child of Xavier's heart, and Xavier had become the father Scott had lost at eight. They had a tie that no one - not her, Warren, nor Alex - could replace. And now, Jean sensed, that tie was about to be tested from another angle.

"I need to talk to you, before we leave this room," Xavier told Scott seriously. Jean was still a silent presence. Scott seemed almost to have forgotten her . . . except he hadn't forgotten her.

"What?"

"St. John didn't come alone. He was too ill - he was brought here."

"Mystique," Scott snarled.

"Erik," Xavier corrected. "Raven, too, but Erik, mostly."

Scott's jaw dropped, literally. "He's _here_? You let him in _our house_?"

"He may also have the virus."

"Good!" Scott snarled, vicious in his anger and not caring how it hurt Charles. "I hope he fucking _does_ have it."

"Scott, you don't mean that -"

"The hell I don't! I want him, and Mystique, _out of here. _ John can stay, but those two? _No way in hell._ "

Xavier's jaw firmed. "This is still my house. Erik may stay until I tell him to leave. If he is ill, he has no where else to go."

"Yes, he does. He can go to _federal prison_ ."

"And how, pray tell, should I force him? He hasn't removed his helmet since he arrived."

They glared at each other, but Xavier didn't relent and Scott stalked past, out the hangar door. "Fine. But don't expect me to be civil to the sonuvabitch."

"I wouldn't dream of it," Xavier muttered - bitter - where Scott couldn't hear. He eyes found Jean then. "You may wish to check on your patient." The slight ice in the tone warned her that she wasn't forgiven yet.

* * *

Bobby showed up on Saturday at lunch in the sub-basement, trailing cords for the Xbox he'd tucked under one arm, and Rogue had to admit she was astonished.

His face was sketched with cautious lines. So was Johnny's where he lay in the bed, hooked up to IVs and monitors, and breathing with a heavy hiss. "Is there a TV in here?" Bobby asked. Both Rogue and John nodded to the one mounted on a swivel shelf in a corner. It was almost the only furniture in the room besides the bed. John occupied one of two private rooms wedged between the main med bay and surgery, and Magneto, Rogue knew, had the other while Mystique made do with an exam room across the hall - at least until they were determined virus-free.

Rogue couldn't believe the professor might really give them free run of the mansion, if they were.

In any case, Bobby dumped the equipment on a side table, then went out again after a chair (as Rogue was sitting in the only extra), and Rogue looked at John. "You want me to stick around?"

"No," he said, coughed, then struggled up on the bed pillows - refusing her instinctive offer to help. "Thanks. Bobby and I need to talk."

Nodding, Rogue rose and headed out even as Bobby was headed back in. "You're leaving?" he said, sounding alarmed.

"Yeah." She jerked her head back into the room. "Johnny wants to talk to you, and you don't need me hanging around." She pinned him with her eyes. "You listen to him, y'hear?" And she headed out into the main medbay, even as Logan was headed in.

"Logan!" she shouted, delighted, and bounced over to hug him. He let her. If he never quite hugged in return, he still managed to convey that he liked it and was trying to pretend he didn't. "When did you get back? Did you hear about Johnny and -"

"Yeah," he interrupted, "I know about John. I got back this morning." He studied Rogue's face. "You careful in there?"

"Yes." Rogue held up hands covered by the latex gloves Dr. McCoy had given her. She was also wearing a hospital gown over her clothes, which she took off now and dumped in a bin marked **Laundry**. "Dr. McCoy went over everything with me, so don't worry. I don't touch him except with the gloves - which pretty much protects us both - and I don't sit near enough for him to cough or sneeze on me. It's not airborne, so it don't matter if I'm just in the room."

Logan had nodded while he studied her face. "How are you?"

Frowning, she looked down. "Okay."

"Really?"

"No."

"Didn't think so. How's John?"

"He don't know yet." She kept her eyes on her hands as she doffed the latex and donned a pair of normal silk opera gloves - indigo today, to match her blouse . . . and her mood. "I mean he don't know he's got an early X-gene and it's gonna kill him." She looked up finally. "Dr. Grey says -"

"Xavier told me." Reaching out, Logan touched her chin, tilting it up - too briefly for her poison skin to register. "You listen, kid - if you get it, you come to me _immediately_ . I ain't gonna let you die. You know that?"

She nodded. She did know it, and that was both a relief and a source of guilt. Even if she fell ill, she didn't have to worry. Logan would save her, just as he had before - but what of the others who, like her, had the bad luck to get a first-generation X-gene? After the meeting earlier that week, she, Jubilee, Piotr and Bobby had all trooped into the medlab to learn what nature had bestowed on them. Bobby and Jubes were (probably) safe; she and Piotr were another matter.

(She'd heard Piotr ask Dr. Grey quietly about Kitty, and while she hadn't heard Dr. Grey's reply, he'd looked relieved. Rogue hadn't said anything to her roommate, and not from spite. She didn't think Pete would want Kitty to know he'd inquired.)

Now, she asked Logan, "Did the professor call you back because he thinks we're gonna get infected here?"

Any of the other adults (except maybe Dr. McCoy) would've offered platitudes. Logan just shrugged. "He don't know, but he's playing it safe. Wise choice. Right now, it looks like we got exactly three people in the mansion who're completely immune - me, Summers, 'n Jean."

"Where is Dr. Grey?"

"They just got back. Went somewhere, apparently. Xavier's meeting 'em." He glanced over his shoulder at the medbay door, as if expecting Jean to come through it any minute. "Listen, I need to go talk to Hank, then I'd like to see John. You be at supper, okay?"

"Okay," she said and started past him, then turned to grab him around the shoulders in another hug. "I'm glad you're back, Logan."

This time, he patted her in return. "You need me - I'm here, kid." And they parted. Marie had more of a spring in her step as she headed out.

* * *

On the way to the medlab, Jean did a quick scan of the mansion residents - and was startled to feel a new mind besides Erik, Raven and John. _Logan_ was back. She brushed over his thoughts briefly, then slid away, steering clear of where he was talking to Hank in the medlab to sequester herself in her own office. Her hands were shaking.

She didn't understand why the very idea of meeting him again face-to-face upset her so. Perhaps it was the delay; she'd had a week to settle back into her old life once more, Logan-free. Now, she sat down at her computer to access the network and review St. John's records, then occupied herself with the promised research into Scott's old brain injuries.

When he and his brother had fallen from a burning plane in their damaged parachute, Scott had landed on the bottom - either by design so he didn't crush Alex, or because he'd been heavier. In any case, that landing had fractured a number of bones, torn up his back (he still had faint scars), and caused him to hit his head hard. Fortunately, the ground had been relatively soft, covered by pine needles, or he might have died. As it was, he'd been unconscious for months and no one had been sure he'd ever wake, never mind what the damage to his brain might be.

Now, re-reading the medical reports written a few weeks after the accident, she better understood why Child Protective Services had agreed so quickly to split up the boys. Scott's prospects hadn't looked good, and CPS must have thought it better to place one of them rather than keep Alex back, hoping his brother regained consciousness, and that there would be a family willing to take two boys, one older and perhaps disabled. As much as it hurt her heart, she recognized that the choice had been a pragmatic one, and best for Alex. It just hadn't been best for Scott. Reading this, she couldn't even find it in her to resent the Blandings, though she did wonder why they hadn't taken Scott, too, when he'd finally woken.

At last, she sensed that Logan had departed the medbay area, so she exited her office to seek out Hank in the main lab, working with the electron microscope. "What've we got?" she asked quietly.

Startled, he glanced up. "When did you get back?" But he went on before she could reply, "The PCRs on Erik and Raven should be finished in about two hours. I've been monitoring John, and his reports are in the system."

"I read them," she said, "in my office." She jerked a thumb back in that direction.

Hank returned to his computer screen with its enlarged microscope images. "I believe the natural resistance of second-generation X-genes may provide our best clue as to where to begin seeking a cure. I assume the professor told you what Warren found out from Emma Frost? Knowing there _is_ a vaccine provides hope."

"Yes. And I think you're right about the second-generation gene . . . ." They proceeded from there, working with an old familiarity, comparing ideas, notes, and theories. Somewhere in the midst of their discussions, Jean asked, "Should we tell John? About his prospects?"

"I don't know," Hank admitted. "I've been chewing on that. On the one hand, he has the right to know. I'd want to, if I were him. On the other hand, I don't want him to give up hope. Just because no first-generation mutant type has yet survived it, that doesn't mean one couldn't. This virus is still very new, and I'm not prepared to say his genome is a death-sentence."

"I'm not, either," Jean confessed. "Some would fight it - see it as a challenge. I don't know about Johnny."

"Perhaps we should consult Bobby to get his opinion?"

"That's a good idea. He knows John best."

"And it might," Hank added, "allow Bobby to feel useful."

Jean just smiled at that. For a genius geek, Hank had surprising insight into human nature.

A little before supper the PCRs for Erik and Raven were ready, and they checked the results. "Do you wish to tell them, or shall I?" Hank asked.

"I will," Jean said. She wanted to speak to Erik alone; they'd had no chance on the way to Alkali. Now, she knocked on the door to his private room and waited. "Come in," he called, and opening the door, she found him sitting quietly in bed, wearing that ridiculous helmet. "So" - he set aside the book he'd been reading - "You've come to bring word of my life or death?"

She scrunched up her nose. "You're too old to be that melodramatic, Erik."

"But it's an accurate description, is it not?"

She breathed out softly. "You don't have the virus."

Was that just a flicker of relief behind his eyes? Otherwise, he gave only a short nod. "I'm free to leave this room then?"

"Medically speaking, yes - but you'll have to discuss with the professor where your can go around the mansion." She tilted her head. "I'd stay away from Scott, if I were you."

His eyebrow lifted. "I shall keep the warning in mind." He was already rising from the bed and, with a wave of his hand, lifted the small suitcase in the corner. "Off to see Charles."

Jean blocked his exit. "First, you owe me an explanation."

"Of what?"

"What you did to Scott."

"I presume you don't mean recently?" She shook her head at him and he sighed, exasperated. "Please, Jean, use your not inconsiderable intellect. Surely you remember how Scott was thirteen years ago. I explained my reasons to him last year - "

"He told me."

"Then I don't see the need to re-explain them to you."

"I respected you once - idolized you."

"That, my dear, was your error. I never asked to be placed on your pedestal."

She snorted. "You may not have asked for it, but you've always enjoyed it. First me, then Mystique . . . and now, John."

"Raven agrees with my politics - and doesn't idolize me." He didn't, she noticed, say anything about St. John. Jean wasn't even sure she bought what he said about Mystique; Raven was to Erik what Jean was to Charles.

"I may understand the _rationale_ behind what you did to Scott," she said now, "but I don't _agree_ with it, and I don't think it was the only choice. Neither does he. Stay away from him, Erik."

Erik appeared amused. "Was that a threat, Dr. Grey? Most threats involve a corollary. Either . . . or. What, pray tell, is your 'or'?"

With her TK, she knocked his helmet off his head and into his hands. He appeared genuinely surprised, but immediately attempted to raise it again. She held his arms immobile, so he resorted to his magnetic control.

The helm still didn't budge. Her TK was more than a match for him.

She smiled tightly. "Or else that. I'm not the Jean Grey you knew, Erik. And you can blame - or thank - yourself for it. Your machine finished my mutation."

She released her hold and the helmet flew back onto his head - rather roughly. Turning on her heel, she went out to confront Mystique and give her the bad news. Erik might have tested viral free, but Mystique had not.

* * *

Summers had been stalking aimlessly about the mansion for the past half hour, and Logan, seated in the rec room reading the paper, watched him come and go. It wasn't nervous energy, and when he passed the rec room for the fourth time, Logan tossed the paper on the oak coffee table and went out to confront him. "Gym. Half an hour - in _gi_ ," and he headed up the main staircase to his room to change. Behind him, he heard Summers draw breath - perhaps to protest - but no words came, and when Logan reached the gym the promised half-hour later, he found Summers waiting in _gi_ as instructed, stretching on the mats in the floor's center. The kid looked up and raised eyebrows in a wordless question.

"Your pacing was driving me fucking crazy," Logan replied.

Rising, Summers faced Logan and bowed formally, student to teacher. Logan bowed back, and they set to work, starting with a simple _kata_, or warming-up exercise that used various moves in a choreographed pattern. Lights in the high ceiling flashed off the kids' visor; this room had used to be the ballroom, its conversion to a gym imperfect and superficial. Logan watched Summers move with a critical eye. The kid had a natural grace, but often held himself too rigidly, as if afraid of it. And tonight, he was angry, which only made the stiffness worse. Logan stopped him halfway through - just a simple arm thrown across his chest . . . but wasn't prepared for Summers' reaction.

Complete rage, like a child's temper tantrum. He knocked Logan's arm away, then began hitting at him, all uncontrolled and vicious and raw - skills straight off the streets. Logan blocked with lazy ease and let the kid burn it off. When he drew back, panting, hands on knees, Logan asked, "Wanna talk?"

"About _what_ ?"

"Whatever's got you pissing mad."

Summers glared. Logan could tell even from behind the visor he wore for practice (and which Logan sometimes made him remove, to learn to fight blind). "Maybe I'm pissed about everything from that damn virus to you being back." Logan didn't reply, and after a minute, Summers rose up to admit (more honestly), "I don't want Magneto in our basement."

"He ain't there," Logan replied. "Saw him earlier, talking to Chuck in his office."

And Summers' face - already flushed - turned an even darker red. "If he's out of the sub-basement, then they've cleared him of Legacy. That means he can _leave_ ."

"Would you leave," Logan asked, "if it was Bobby?"

Scott breathed out and appeared, if possible, even angrier. "Bobby is my student, Logan! _Nothing_ more."

Baffled, Logan blinked. "Ain't that what John is to Magneto?"

And as if just realizing the implication of what he'd said, Scott blushed hard as a couple of things came together in Logan's head. "You think Magneto is diddling John? That's a pretty big leap, Summers."

The boy turned away, arms crossed. "Not if you knew Erik."

Logan chewed on that. "He proposition you, when you were a student here?"

Summers just started laughing - but with the kind of edge that spoke of hysteria, not humor. "Well, at the time, it was my job to get propositioned."

He explained no further, but Logan wasn't stupid, and recalled what the kid had told him months ago about being an orphan and on his own since fourteen. Suddenly, a whole hell of a lot of things about Summers made much more sense. "_Shit,_ " was all he said.

"I'm not a pansy. And I don't need your sympathy."

"I ain't givin' it," Logan replied. "That's how they found you? Erik picked you up for a night?"

"More like three or four months, actually." Summers looked away again. "It's a long story. But yes, it was Erik. At the time, Charles didn't know."

"I just bet he didn't," Logan replied, the rage mounting. And to think he'd trusted Xavier -

"He _didn't_ , Logan. He was furious. I'm not the reason they split, exactly, but I was the straw that broke the camel's back. The professor saved me. I owe him everything, and the only reason I haven't blasted a hole through Erik since he got here is because of Charles."

"You think John -?"

"I don't know. But I intend to find out. If Erik touched him, I don't give a shit what Charles thinks. Erik's dead. I'll kill him myself." Summers got up, heading past Logan for the gym door. Logan's hand shot out to stop him.

"How's Jean?"

Summers head whipped around. "None of _your_ damn business."

Logan glared back, angry that Scott would tell him such a tender thing about his past, then raise hackles over Jean Grey. "It ain't a challenge. It's a _question_ ."

Summers' jaw worked. "She's fine."

"Is she?"

The younger man glared. "She will be - if people give her a flippin' chance."

Logan shook his head and let Summers go. They weren't ready to talk honestly about Jean yet. A lot had been forgiven, and real trust had been established - but the topic of Jean was still off limits . . . at least now that she was alive again.

"Lemme know what you find out about John," Logan said instead. "If Erik's guilty, I'll help you skewer him."

Scott's expression was amused. "Logan, I appreciate the sentiment, but your entire skeleton is laced with a ferrous metal. That makes you a fun action figure for Magneto to play with. This is one case where I'm probably better equipped on my own." Scott snorted. "He's never taken me seriously anyway. I'm still just a pretty hustler to him." And he headed out.

* * *

Artie and Terry were sitting in the computer lab off the library, which was, in turn, off the rec room. They occupied side-by-side computers as they often did, using IM for conversation. They were discussing movies, at the moment - _Superman Returns_ versus _Pirates of the Carribean 2_.

Anything, Artie thought, to keep his mind off St. John in the medlab.

The door opened and Illyana Rasputin walked in. Seeing them both, she paused. Artie and Terry looked up. "'Allo," Terry said.

Illyana didn't reply, went straight to a computer at the far end of the table instead.

_HOW is she related to Pete? I can't imagine two people more different,_ Terry typed into her IM box.

_Not easy to live with, eh?_ Artie replied.

_Most of the time, she doesn't say much at all, but when she does, it's mostly to complain - about schoolwork, having to share a room, Xavier's philosophy, or even the school food._

_She's not exactly happy to be here._

_You can say that again. She's none too happy to be a mutant, neither._

_That, too._

There was a pause, then Terry typed, _Do you regret it? _ The sound of her fingers on the keys was rapid, and the click of the return key sounded angry . . . or scared.

Artie stared at the words in the box for a while before replying, _Every time I can't eat with the rest of you._

_I don't care,_ Terry typed quickly, furiously. _I've never said it, but I don't care, Artie. You can eat with me any time you want - and eat whatever you want. You're my friend._

Artie was blushing. _TNX,_ he typed back.

And later that evening, they went to dinner, together.

* * *

After talking to Erik and Mystique, Jean returned to her office before dinner. She noticed almost immediately that her answering machine was blinking. How odd. As she was formally "dead," and almost no one called Scott on their private ground line. She assumed it had to be her parents, or perhaps her sister, and hit the play-back button.

The British-inflected voice that came out of it froze her blood.

_Dr. Grey, may I congratulate you on a most remarkable resuscitation. Or perhaps we should call it an 'Elvis'? I'm not at all sure why you saw fit to orchestrate your own 'death,' but that hardly matters. I have a proposition for you. Meet me Monday at noon in the Bacio Restaurant in North Salem. Don't be late. And don't bring anyone, especially not McCoy._

Jean backed away from the machine as if it were a scorpion, then sat down abruptly in her office chair. Her whole body shook.

Nathaniel Essex.

He knew she was alive.

How, she had no idea, and reaching over, she hit the "erase" button - hard and angry - then immediately regretted it. There went any evidence. Then again, what could she possibly do with such evidence? More to the point, should she meet Essex as he'd asked (demanded)? Why might he want to see her, anyway? Blackmail?

Yet she had blackmail material on him, as well. He'd created this virus, and from what Emma Frost had told Warren, he also had a cure - the knowledge of which would be swimming about in his head.

There really wasn't any question but that she'd meet him . . . and go fishing.

Perhaps it was foolish, perhaps she should tell Scott, or the professor, but they'd insist on coming along or devising some other measure. And what could Essex possibly do to her _now_? She couldn't die.

So she'd meet him on Monday as he'd asked. And she'd get that cure out of him, or she'd get evidence against him somehow.

* * *

**Notes:** Regarding the movie discussion between Artie and Terry, keep in mind that Jean died in the fall of 2005, and this is 9 months later - the end of the summer of 2006.


	32. Personal Journal: Confrontations

**_From Scott Summers' Personal Journal:_ **

After talking to Logan, I went out to the stables and shut myself in Farolisa's stall, curled up in a corner on the hay, and just sat. She wuffled my hair, but otherwise let me be. There's something comforting about 800 pounds of horse breathing softly nearby, the careful shift of her weight and the back-and-forth flicking of her tail against flies. It was summer, and hot, and the hay stuck to my shirt and hair. Dust motes floated past, lit by sunlight peeking in through the far door. The air was dry and smelled pleasantly of horse.

I'd told Logan about my past. I'd never, ever intended to tell Logan; it had just spilled out. That Ororo knew was one thing. But Logan? What demon had possessed me to tell _him_ ? I'd just laid myself open for ridicule and patronizing from here on out.

Except . . . he hadn't looked amused. He'd looked angry - and on my behalf. And he'd told me, two months before, about his fiance Mariko. He hadn't had to do that. Just like he hadn't had to teach me judo. And he was a good teacher, not using it as a chance to humiliate me or knock me around the mat. I'd never expected to find Logan a good teacher (and still couldn't imagine him in front of a normal classroom), but he had a patient dispassion in the gym. I didn't think he'd deal well with a truly incompetent or lazy student, but if one wanted to learn, he was willing to teach without turning it into a pissing contest.

But maybe that had more to do with the change in our interaction. I was no longer a rival to him, I was just another kid, if an older one, yet I doubted that was a positive development. We hadn't been back to the field since he'd returned in June, but could he still take orders from me when we inevitably wound up there? I might be his student at judo, but still commanded the X-Men. Not that I'd ever sought it. In fact, I'd found myself leader by default, as if the rest had taken a step back when I wasn't looking, and I'd suddenly found myself standing in the front. In fact, Logan had been the first to challenge my authority, and I admit, I'd responded so badly because I wasn't sure I should _be_ commanding in the first place. Wasn't I just dressed up street trash?

The stall door opened abruptly and I jumped. It was Jean, and I eyed her as she greeted my mare, but Lisa backed away, tail swishing, head up and nostrils flared. "I guess I don't smell familiar," Jean said. Her face looked hurt.

She turned to me then, picking through the hay and horse droppings to settle down beside me, arms around her drawn up knees. She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, not lab clothes. "I felt you," she explained. Even before Alkali, she'd often known when I was deeply upset, a sensitivity that stretched as far back as our youth, before we'd become lovers, before we'd shouldered these adult responsibilities. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"Can't you just read my mind?"

"I could. But I'd rather you told me."

"You sound like the professor."

"Thank you."

I laughed and she let go of her knees to slip an arm through mine, companionable - the touch of a friend, not a lover. "I've missed this," I admitted.

She nodded. "We got so busy in the past few years, we never seemed to have time for each other, did we? That wasn't good; I've missed you, too. We should get out more, just be _us_ ." She laid her head on my shoulder, soft hair tickling my neck. On the other side of the stall, Lisa watched, a bit jealous. She doesn't like to share me, even with two-footed females. "Tell me what happened?"

So I did. It was easy, with her sitting there like she'd used to, and she listened, nodding against my shoulder now and then. "I think you're right, that Logan doesn't see you as a rival anymore, but as another kid to protect. He probably sees all of us that way, now."

"I doubt he'd see you that way."

She raised her head to glare at me. "Scott - don't start."

And that quickly, our ease dissolved. I opened my mouth, but didn't reply, didn't push. I was afraid - not afraid of her, but _afraid_ to peel back the scab that had formed over the wounds of the year before. I still didn't know why she'd left the plane. She said she didn't either, and I hadn't questioned that, but surely there had been a reason - and I still suspected it had to do with Wolverine. Our relationship had been in trouble ever since he'd arrived the previous fall. Now he was back . . . and _he knew what I'd been_ . Whatever he'd said to me in June, whatever apologies he'd given me, he _knew_ . I was a fake, and a whore.

"Stop it!"

"Jean -"

"Stop it, Scott!" Her eyes were _glowing_ , and even in my misery, I drew away, suddenly reminded of what _had_ changed since last year.

"You were reading my thoughts."

"You were practically _shouting_ them, dammit. I know why you may feel you're not good enough - but God, it's been what? _Thirteen years_! Can't you leave it behind? It makes you really hard to love sometimes."

I turned my face down to frown at the hay between my knees, picking at straws of it. "Maybe you should give up, then."

She made an incoherent noise of pure rage and rose to her feet - shot up, in fact, as if weight meant nothing. Her eyes were glowing still and she was _hovering_ . I don't think even she realized that. I should probably have been afraid, but right then, I just hoped she'd strike me down where I sat. "Sometimes I think that's what you want," she snarled. "You _want_ me to give up. Why?"

I hesitated, unable to form a coherent answer. I'd never understood it myself. "I don't know," I admitted finally. "I don't want you to give up, but I guess I'm afraid you will eventually anyway." Afraid someone better would come along - like Wolverine.

"How many times do I have to tell you, I'm not leaving you?"

"But you did - at Alkali. You walked off that plane and shut me up inside -"

"- I had to save all of you -"

"- when I could have saved _you_ , if you'd listened to me -"

"- I didn't want to die, but there wasn't any other choice -"

"- You didn't _have_ to die, there _was_ a choice."

We both shut up then to glare, her floating, me sitting. "Leaving the plane didn't have anything to do with you," she said finally with deceptive softness. "I told you - I came back for you."

Maybe she had, but I still thought she'd left because of me, too. Now, she settled back down to kneel on the straw in front of me. Behind her, I could see Farolisa backed all the way into a corner, head up and pawing, eye rolling in fear. "You're scaring my horse," I said. She glanced over her shoulder, then back to me.

"What was I doing?"

"Floating in the air and glowing."

She rubbed the bridge of her nose, looking exasperated. "It wasn't intentional."

"I know."

"At least you didn't run away from me."

"I think I'm getting used to it. You still act like yourself. Before, if you could have floated when you were pissed off, you would have."

She laughed, and it somehow broke the tension. Her eyes were back to normal, soft and dark. "I'm never going to leave you. I told you that. You're stuck with me, Summers." Reaching out, she gripped my hands. I was still sitting, knees up, while she knelt in front of me, our hands clasped between us. "I did some research, earlier," she said now, "into your medical records, comparing your brain scans to normal ones. I'd like to 'look' at your brain now with my TK."

I stiffened. She must have felt it through my grip. "I'm not going to _do_ anything, I just want to try and, well, _feel_ your brain. I don't know how else to describe it."

I tilted my head slightly. "Okay."

She moved closer, scooting up almost between my knees, and raised her hands to either side of my face, like she'd used to do when sharing more than surface thoughts. These days, of course, she didn't need that for telepathy. I could feel her hands moving through my hair towards the back of my skull, as if she really were feeling. After a few breaths, she took her hands down. "I think it's just scar tissue that's somehow gotten in the way."

"And that means?"

"It's relatively easy to fix. If that part of your brain were atrophied, it'd be harder, but this is repair, not complete reconstruction."

I blinked. Could it really be that easy? "You're not going to do anything now?" I realized abruptly that I wasn't ready. Even if she could fix my power so it worked right, I'd lived half my life like this. I needed time to get used to the idea of living a different way, however attractive it might be. Change had never come easily for me.

She seemed to understand because she smiled. "I won't do anything now; I told you I wouldn't. And I'd prefer to do it in the medbay, not the stable. But yes, I think we can fix this."

"I'd have to relearn how to use my power."

"Probably. At least in part. Like me," she added, voice wry. And she had a point. Any changes I'd face wouldn't even compare to the changes she faced now. "The natural state for your power probably isn't 'on,' so you'd have to learn how to _turn_ it on. But I suspect the trigger is similar to the way you make it stronger, or less strong."

"But we don't know that."

"No, we don't."

I nodded, chewing on it. "What if fixing it didn't work, and you just wound up turning it off permanently?" As frustrating as I found my blasts, as much as I'd hated them once, I wouldn't give them up if the choice lay between a malfunctioning power and no power.

"If that happens," Jean said, "I'll put it back like it was."

"You could do that?"

"Yes. I'm going to dissolve the scar tissue, but I could rebuild it, if necessary."

I nodded. "Okay, let me think about it tonight."

She got to her feet again. "Take your time. There's no rush." She glanced at Lisa again. "I'll leave you two alone. I really didn't mean to scare her." And she went out, shutting the stall door quietly. After a moment, I rose to approach my horse, who was still trembling and sweating.

"It's okay," I told her, stroking her cheekplate and neck until she relaxed and her head came down. She was as damp as if she'd been run full-out; Jean had terrified her that much. "You and everyone else at the mansion," I muttered to her, grabbing a brush so I could curry her.

* * *

It was later that same evening that I had an accidental confrontation with Erik Lehnsherr. I'd been headed up to change after my time in the stall - I smelled of horse - and he was coming out of a guestroom on that floor. We both stopped dead in the hall and stared at each other, and my gut dropped. His eyebrow went up - that ironic expression I remembered so well - as if inviting me to say or do something, blast him through the wainscoting, perhaps.

I approached him for the second time inside twelve months, after not having seen him for twelve years. We were exactly of a height, now, though he was wearing his helmet - if not the cloak - and it made him appear slightly taller. "You look ridiculous," I said.

"A necessary precaution," he replied.

"Against me? I don't think it'd be very effective."

He frowned. "Don't be obtuse."

"Where do you think you're going?"

"To dinner."

"Not in the dining hall, you're not. I'll have something sent up to you."

He glared, lips thinning. "You think to order me around?"

"It may be Charles' house, but I'm now headmaster and you're not welcome in the school dining hall. As long as the professor says you can stay, I won't kick you out, but you're not welcome among the kids. They know who you are, and you scare them."

He snorted softly and turned his head sideways. "Really, Scott. What do you think I'm going to do to them? Attack them with the cutlery?"

"Now it's my turn to say, 'Don't be obtuse.'"

"I'm fond of children, you know."

"Yes - a little too fond." I could feel my jaw hardening and decided this was as good a time as any to find out what I wanted to know. "First me - now John, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few more in between."

His eyes narrowed and all traces of sardonic humor fled his face. "Of exactly what are you accusing me?"

"Does he sleep with you, or do you let him have his own room wherever it is you're holing up these days?"

His nostrils flared and his chin went up. "You sadly misjudge me, Mr. Summers. I explained to you last fall exactly why I did what I did, in your case. But yours _was_ a special case, and John came to me willingly. He is my protege, not my bed partner. I'm not in the habit of seducing children."

His sheer, offended pride convinced me. He wasn't lying. I eyed him a moment more and he met it, unblinking. Inside me, something uncurled.

"Fine," I said. "So I won't blast your ass from here to Miami, but as far as I'm concerned, you're sleeping in this house on sufferance. You can go down to visit Raven, but I don't want you wandering around or eating in the dining hall. If Charles will have you, you can eat with him. But the rest of the adults will be keeping an eye out for you." I smiled slightly. "And don't forget, my girlfriend can read you just as easily as Charles can."

"Not with this." He tapped his helmet.

"Oh, she may not be able to read your thoughts, but she has powers the professor doesn't, namely the ability to sense your heartbeat. Step out of line, Erik, and I'll have her shut that heartbeat off." In fact, I had no idea if she could - much less would - but it made for a good bluff.

"Such a tough little X-Man," he said, half mocking - but not disapproving. "I finally hear the boy I first met down on Avenue B. It's nice to see you haven't entirely lost your backbone, Cyclops." And turning, he swept back inside his guest room, shutting the door. But a second later, it opened. "Oh - if I'm not mistaken, that's fish I smell. Please have some sent up, with hollandaise. Charles's cook makes such a wonderful hollandaise."

The door shut again, and I snorted. We'd each scored a point. He was staying in his room - but he'd managed to reduce me to his waiter, in the process.


	33. Cloak and Dagger

Nothing new developed on Sunday. John still held his own, Bobby continued to hang about the sub-basement; Mystique began to show preliminary signs of illness; Hank poked at theories for a vaccine; Magneto continued to hole up in his third-floor guestroom seeing only Charles; Scott pondered whether losing the glasses could backfire; and Jean still avoided Logan. Sunday afternoon, Jean received an oddly intense message from Warren on her office phone (she no longer had a private cell line). "Need to talk to you - call me back." She did immediately, but no one answered so she left a message of her own. He didn't return her call that evening, and she assumed he'd gone out.

In any case, on Monday a little before noon, she left the mansion. It was easy to plant a suggestion in everyone's mind that she was in her office and didn't want to be disturbed. Her link with Scott might render him able to see through it, and she doubted she'd fool the professor if he probed, but Scott was preoccupied, catching up on school business, and Xavier appeared similarly busy. She'd be back before anyone was the wiser.

North Salem wasn't far. Technically, it and Salem Center were both part of one extended town in Westchester. The county contained six cities plus a number of towns made up of villages and hamlets. The northern half was rural and upper crust - Ororo always joked that one couldn't throw a rock without hitting a horse barn - but the southern section, bordering the Bronx, was more urban and not as affluent. North Salem lay in the northern half, and the roads here were two-lane and winding. Jean arrived at the Bacio Restaurant, parked Scott's RX-8, and got out only to find a "Closed" sign on the door. Apparently, the place wasn't open on Mondays.

What kind of joke was Nathaniel playing?

Before she could walk back to the car, however, she heard another car door slam behind and turned. Essex stood there, dressed neatly, as always, in black. "Dr. Grey," he said.

"The restaurant is closed, Nate." She wasn't inclined to play games, either with her identity or polite formality.

He smiled at her - smirked really - as he strolled up beside her. "Of course it is. You didn't expect me to ask to meet with you in public, did you?" Glancing around to be sure no one was watching, he pointed a finger at the lock and a sizzle of electricity shot out, frying the alarm system and its electronics. She blinked. It seemed he wasn't inclined to play games, either. If Xavier had told her Essex was a mutant, he'd never revealed _himself_ to her before. "My 'power,'" he said sardonically. "Such a silly term, don't you think? Like something from a child's cartoon." And he pushed the door open. "After you, Dr. Grey."

"This is breaking and entering."

"Please. For a woman collecting life insurance on a faked death, breaking and entering should be a minor legal snarl."

She frowned, unaccountably annoyed. "I didn't 'fake' my death, and I certainly didn't do it for the insurance money. I don't even know how you found me."

"All in good time, Dr. Grey. Now please, shall we go inside before someone actually notices us and realizes we don't work for the restaurant?"

He had a point. The last thing she wanted was a run-in with local police. So she entered, and he shut the door behind them. The place was quiet, and very empty, the decor a homey red-and-white checker pattern with small tables and chairs of simple blond wood. Jean wondered if she should be nervous, but was less afraid for her physical health than for what he _knew_ about her. "Why did you call me here? And how did you know I was back?"

He smiled - it was genuine - and pulled out a chair for her, then sat down himself. "I know quite a lot about you, Jean Grey."

That unnerved her, and she wondered how much he did know, and how much was a bluff - as, no doubt, he'd intended. Meanwhile, he slouched in his chair, one elbow crooked over the high back, deceptively casual. "I've watched you for a long time, waiting for you to discover your full potential and bloom like a Darwinian rose." The smirk came back, as if his own bad metaphor amused him. "I can't tell you how upset I was to learn of your untimely demise, but it would seem that the rumors of your death were greatly exaggerated." Another smirk at quoting Twain. "Tell me exactly what did happen, if you didn't 'fake' your death?"

She frowned. "I'm not here to satisfy your curiosity, Nate. I'm here because you said you had a proposition."

"Ah, but you wanted me to satisfy yours."

"I believe I'm owed an explanation, and you still didn't tell me how you knew I was alive."

"I saw you on the news," he said, dropping his arm and all pretense of the casual. "When that idiot reporter cornered Henry. You were seated in the car behind him."

He'd noticed that? "I couldn't have been onscreen for more than a second or two, and not as myself."

"Indeed. I nearly wore out the tape being certain that my eyes had not deceived me. First, I saw the profile of Jean Grey in that car, then of a blonde-haired woman. I wasn't aware your gifts involved metamorph capabilities?"

Jean ignored the prompt, not wanting him to know just what she could do. "Why did you call me here?"

He waited a moment before replying. His eyes, which had always disconcerted her, roved now over her face and form, but she felt more like a specimen than a woman. Finally, he leaned forward, forearms on the table, eying her from beneath dark brows. "I would imagine that you've heard all about this new virus from your good friend Henry McCoy?"

"Yes." It was neutral. She wouldn't reveal yet how much she knew about the virus, or his hand in it, and she reached with gentle mental fingers to probe his thoughts as, under the table, her hand slipped into her purse, finding metal and hitting a button.

"Such an interesting virus, I should think," Essex was saying, "that targets mutants and mutants alone. I assume there must be some connection between the virus's recognition site and the X-gene transcription factor where it binds to the victim's DNA?"

She narrowed her eyes, but less at his suggestion (of course he'd know) than at the fact that _she couldn't read him_ . He was all white noise. She wondered if it owed to his power, and recalled that Ororo couldn't be read easily, either. While Ororo's gift wasn't electricity, _per se_ , she did control the lightning.

He was watching her, and grinned now. "I see you've found my other 'power' - or perhaps 'annoying trait,' as Emma Frost prefers to call it. And yes, I know of your connections to Ms. Frost; as I said, I know quite a lot about you. You can't read my mind, Jean. I seem to possess a natural shielding that makes me quite opaque to telepaths. Convenient, no?"

He must have guessed she'd try, and was probably enjoying her frustration. She gave up for the moment. "As for what _I_ know - I know this virus wasn't accidental."

"Oh, jolly good! I would've been so terribly disappointed if my exceptional piece of engineering had gone unnoticed and unappreciated."

She felt her temper flare, but held it in check. "It's _killing_ people - but I don't guess you care."

"My interest is in improving our genome, which means eliminating the dead-ends."

"Those dead-ends are _people_, Nate, with friends and family, histories and faces!"

"Temper, temper, Dr. Grey. I'm doing your grandchildren a favor."

The absolute cool with which he spoke frightened Jean worse than the virus did. She'd known for some time that Essex was peculiar at best, and potentially criminal, at worst, but . . . . "You're a _sociopath_ ," she snarled now.

For the first time, he appeared genuinely annoyed. "I most certainly am not. A sociopath cannot control his impulses. I control my impulses very well, and I created this virus neither to gain recognition, nor wealth. I have one goal only - to improve _homo sapiens superior_."

She doubted that; Nathaniel Essex had quite the ego. "What you've done is immoral!"

"_A_moral." His smile was back. "Yet, as I recall my mythology, immortals often are amoral."

She blinked. "What?"

"I cannot die, Jean . . . though not as a result of a healing factor, such as your remarkable Logan - oh, yes, I know about everyone in your database. Logan may heal, but he will also age, albeit very slowly. One day, in a century or four, he'll grow old enough to die. But I - I apparently _cannot_ die from 'natural causes.' My body resuscitates a failing heart and rejuvenates itself - another side effect of my power, it seems."

Jean narrowed her eyes, wondering if he could resuscitate from atomization.

"I was born in 1859," he continued, "the same year in which Charles Darwin published _On the Origin of Species_ - a synchronicity I've always considered momentous. Understanding what made me unique became my life's passion, but once I'd isolated my X-gene, I realized I was not unique. I was _more_. I was the next step in human evolution, and I've dedicated the rest of my life - a very long life - to furthering the advancement of our subspecies."

Could he possibly be telling the truth? If so, he was even older than Logan, but her scientific curiosity was bridled by human feeling. "So you further evolution by killing people?"

"Sometimes that is what nature requires. I'm not afraid to do the necessary. The span of human years is brief, to me, and I prefer not to become attached."

And that - that suggested things she doubted he'd intended. What must it be like to live to see not only one's children age and die, but one's grandchildren, perhaps even great-grandchildren? How would _she_ feel as Scott aged and failed? But that was a question for another day, and she tapped her lips. "How did you get information out of my database?"

"William Stryker. A terrible fool who thought himself quite clever. He took your database when he took Cerebro. He also provided the money for my initial research, which took some decades. A mutant-killing virus! It was intended to be his back-up plan, you know."

"You might have lost everything if his primary plan had succeeded."

Essex frowned, appearing annoyed again. "I might. Yet I built the device that suppressed your professor's telepathy, and helped to assemble the secondary Cerebro - as well as designed it to _fry_ his synapses should he stay inside long enough to kill. Unfortunately, my safeguards failed."

"Probably because you didn't count on Magneto rearranging the panels."

The frown lifted from Essex's face, as if he'd just received a necessary puzzle piece. "Ah - that would explain it. Yes."

"But Stryker didn't fund this virus," Jean said then. "We know who did. Sebastian Shaw."

"Brilliant! I'm most impressed. Who put together the pieces? You? Henry? Well, never mind, but yes, I wasn't finished when dear Bill met his end at Alkali Lake. Sebastian has been most generous - although with different goals. Their goals don't matter to me, so long as my own are met. But -"

He paused dramatically, forcing her to wait, even seducing her into leaning slightly forward.

"Sometimes a new possibility eclipses an old goal, or at least makes a compromise viable - all of which leads to my proposal. I not only created the virus, Dr. Grey, but also created a vaccine at Shaw's insistence. He wants to sell it. But the FDA will require trials before its approval, and Shaw can't pretend to offer a vaccine for their testing for some months yet. You know how viral research is. The delays leave plenty of time to eliminate a number of primitive X-gene mutants."

Jean frowned; she knew all that, though he probably didn't realize she knew. "And . . . ?"

"And I'm willing to offer the vaccine to _you_ - or rather, to you and Henry. Use it to protect those 'faces' - as you termed them - whom you love, then submit it to the FDA as your own work. As I told you, I'm not interested in fame or financial compensation."

"So what _do_ you want in exchange for the vaccine? And aren't you afraid of double-crossing Shaw?"

His smile was supremely confident. "Not afraid in the least. As for what I want . . . ." The smile widened. "My price is the usual - your first-born son. Well, metaphorically speaking. I want you to agree to superovulation therapy and then an oocytes retrieval. And I also want you to supply sperm from your partner, Scott Summers."

Jean blinked. She couldn't possibly have heard that correctly. "You . . . _what?_"

"I want your eggs, Dr. Grey, and I want Mr. Summers's sperm. The two of you together are . . . incredibly unique. I had no idea . . . no idea at all until I saw his DNA in your database." His expression turned uncharacteristically dreamy. "A perfect genetic match. The children of your union won't have a mere second-generation X-gene, but a _third_ . They would be the _next_ step - _predictable_ mutation, Dr. Grey. No more genetic crapshoots; with this third step we can know exactly what mutant powers any given genetic union would produce. In your case - children with telepathy, telekinesis, and time-walking teleportation. They will command _fourth-dimensional space_ . Forget breaking the light-speed barrier, your children will be able to create passageways - wormholes - at will through both space _and_ time."

Jean was gaping. "You've been reading too much Greg Bear, or Isaac Asimov."

He actually laughed. "Not at all. I've seen it in your genomes. So would you, if you knew how to look. Mr. Summers may be unable to use his powers properly, but there's nothing wrong with his _gametes_. He'll pass his full gift to his children. Combined with your unique union of telepathy and telekinesis, the full scope of that power will move mutants to the next level. Your children are what our species will evolve into, bound no longer by physical limitations, perhaps not even bound by life and death. The entire universe, future and past, will be ours."

Jean blinked.

The man was a stark, raving lunatic.

She rose so fast, she knocked over her chair. The crash sounded loud in the empty, enclosed space of the restaurant. "You are out of your mind," she said. "Absolutely nuts if you think I'm giving you a child of mine and Scott's! The answer is no. Absolutely no."

"Jean, Jean - " He sounded pained. "Consider the lives you could save. And I'm not asking you for a child of yours and Scott's; I'm asking you for a harvest of oocytes, and some of his sperm. You'll never carry nor see this child. In return, you'll receive the vaccine formula, plus enough vaccine to inoculate your entire mansion. Weigh the lives of those you know and love against some chromosomes."

Jean's mouth fell open, her breath stopped by the complete disconnect in his thinking. "_No,_" she said again. "Not now, not _ever. _ You're no more fit to be a parent than Hitler. Stay away from me, Nathaniel - and don't get any ideas about revealing me to the press. Remember what I know about you and what you've done . . . and I have your own admission for evidence."

Reaching into her purse, she pulled out a digital voice recorder she used in the lab for dictation. "I might be a telepath, but sometimes the KISS principle applies. Keep it simple . . . ."

Face twisting into a mask of rage, he raised a finger to send an electric bolt at the recorder, but she'd anticipated that, and deflected it. He jerked to his feet - perhaps to accost her physically - but she blew him backwards over tables with her TK. He landed in a heap against a far wall, chairs atop him.

She ran out of the restaurant, toward's Scott's car, starting the engine at a distance and throwing the door open. She was in the Mazda and speeding away before Essex even made it out the restaurant door, her digital recorder still gripped tightly in her fist as she drove. Maybe Warren hadn't been able to get Emma's consent to testify, but with this tape, they wouldn't need it.

* * *

St. John passed into the critical phase of his illness a bit after one on Monday afternoon. Bobby was in the room with him at the time. They'd been talking - John being too weak now to play video games and his hands too swollen from edema - when suddenly he said his stomach pained him. Bobby offered to fetch Dr. McCoy, but John waved off the suggestion. The pain didn't ebb, and ten minutes later, his whole body stiffened as he spewed blood-pink liquid all over his sheets. Bobby shouted, pulling back in shock, horror, fear, and simple disgust. "Dr. McCoy!" he bellowed even as Hank came tearing into the room.

He'd been hovering outside in the main bay. Given previous patterns, he's expected John to reach a crisis in the next twenty-four hours. If he survived the crisis without hemorrhaging, he'd recover. Now, Hank snapped on gloves and bellowed for Jean, who was in her office.

But Jean didn't come. Hank insured the boy's trachea and esophagus were clear, then rolled him onto his side. "Bobby, please go to Dr. Grey's office and tell her I need her in John's room."

Wide-eyed and obedient, Bobby ducked out. Hank checked that the IV lines weren't tangled and mopped up red-laced spew, tearing off the top sheet from the bed and settling towels and pans around the boy - and wishing for the school nurse. But Xavier had found some excuse to keep her away. Going to the intercom, he called up to his mother instead. "I need you."

"On my way, hon," she replied.

Bobby was back, skidding to a stop in the doorway and breathing hard. "She's not in her office. I checked a bunch of other rooms, and she's not there, either!"

"Relax, Bobby. She's either in the Little Girl's Room, or she went upstairs for something. Please go see if you can locate her."

Nodding, Bobby dashed off again and Hank returned to preparing John's bed for the battle to come - and likely, the end. He'd sounded calmer for Bobby than he felt. Normally, Jean alerted him if she were leaving the medbay area, precisely _because_ he might need her. He couldn't imagine where she'd gone off to.

* * *

Scott was waiting in the garage when Jean returned, fists on hips and expression somewhere between thunder and terror. As soon as she'd pulled his car into its usual spot, he yanked the door open and started in. "Where did you _go_ ? And wearing your own face? Are you crazy, Jean? What happened to you? I felt -"

Suddenly exhausted, she got out and raised a hand to cover his mouth, shutting off the stream of anxious questions. Then rather than bother with words, she dumped the events of the last hour straight into his mind - gently. She recalled Alaska, and how her attempt to give her experiences to him and Warren had sent both reeling with pain. Now, he winced but withstood the memory transfer even as she offered him her digital recorder. "Our proof." And she snuggled into his arms, needing the physical touch, more upset by what Essex had suggested than she'd realized. She was starting to wonder whether - if she and Scott did have a child - the psychotic SOB might try to _steal_ it? And even more, what if his predictions were accurate? If she and Scott had a baby, would it really have the incredible powers he'd predicted? Nate might have questionable morals and the kind of personality that made others avoid him like the plague, but no one had ever accused him of stupidity.

Now, Scott stroked her hair, the gentleness in sharp contrast to the irritation in his voice. "I'm impressed, Jean. Pissed as hell, but impressed."

"He couldn't hurt me - not physically. I thought it worth the risk to see what I could find out."

He pushed her away to look into her face. "Maybe he couldn't physically hurt you, but that doesn't mean he couldn't _hurt_ you - which he did, didn't he?" She couldn't deny it; the threat of Essex now loomed over both their futures. "You took a hell of a chance. I wish you'd told me before leaving. Why _didn't_ you?"

"You'd have stopped me."

"Probably, but I have good reasons." He held up the recorder. "We can't use this."

"Why not?"

"Because while it exposes Essex, it also exposes _you_ ."

"So? Scott, this is too important! People's _lives_ are at stake!"

"And arresting Essex will make him give up the vaccine? Be realistic." He pocketed her recorder. "Arresting Essex would just insure we never get the vaccine, short of torture, and whatever he did, it doesn't justify resorting to a mutant version of Abu Ghraib. That's assuming they could even catch, then hold him - or that Britain wouldn't demand his extradition. The plain fact is that we have a better shot at _tricking_ the vaccine out of him than we have at getting it if he's turned over to the FBI."

She blinked at him. "Scott, what are you suggesting?"

"I'm inclined to give him what he wants -"

"_What?_ "

"- then take it away."

She tilted her head. "What are you talking about?"

"The other night, when we spoke of kids, you implied that you could ripen your own eggs. If so, could you fake him out? Give him eggs that aren't fertile? And kill the sperm in my semen? I doubt he has any real idea of what you can do, and he wouldn't know it's useless until he tries to use it. Meanwhile, we've got the vaccine. Make it a stipulation that he brings the vaccine at the same time he collects the eggs. If he protests, tell him that's the only way we'll do the deal. I think he'll bite. He wants it enough - he'll bite."

She just stared at him. "You're brilliant. And completely ruthless."

"I'm a strategist." But a little smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, telling her he was pleased at the compliment - both of them, from his perspective - and it occurred to her that it took someone like Scott to handle someone like Essex.

"The problem," she said now, "is that I don't think he'll believe me if I suddenly change my mind."

"Probably not. But he might believe _me_. Two reasons - one, I'm male, and if he grew up in the middle 1800s in England, whatever he's seen since, his birth era will still shape his perception of women, and men. He expects you to be emotional. He tried using that against you today - appealed to your feelings. If I approach him dispassionately, he'll assume I'm like him, that I see the 'value' of the exchange. Second, he wants this, and is inclined to believe in acquiescence. He thinks he has us over the proverbial barrel, and doesn't realize you're capable of sabotaging his little plan. You can continue to appear reluctant - say I ordered you to do it."

She listened with pursed lips, annoyed. No doubt he was right about Essex and women. While Nate clearly admired her mind, he also condescended to her. She'd thought that just his natural arrogance, but perhaps not entirely. Yet even more, she disliked giving the impression that she'd consent to something just because Scott ordered it, and he must have sensed the direction of her thoughts, because he added, "Jean, it's a _ploy_ . I'm not asking you to _be_ the obedient little wifey - just play that role. He'll buy it because he's conditioned to."

Before she could reply, though, the door leading into the house was thrown open and Bobby stood there, panting and wild-eyed. "I found you!" he said, even as Jean was turning away from Scott, knowing his next words would be: "Johnny's started throwing up blood."

Jean handed Scott her purse. "Take this to our room. I'm on the way, Bobby," and she set off behind the boy.

* * *

Rogue sat at her desk, working on her college 'check list,' when Bobby knocked on the partly open door to her dorm room. Glancing up, she said, "Hey. Come on in."

He did so, collapsing on her bed with old familiarity. He looked hot, tired, and upset, and ran a hand through his sweaty hair, then coughed. "It's Johnny," he said without preamble, and Rogue put down her pen to stand up. "I was running around, looking for Dr. Grey, then came to find you." He just met her eyes, didn't say anything else.

Both her hands went up to her mouth, then she grabbed her gloves and slipped them on, and put on slippers, too (she might be willing to go barefoot on the hardwood floors of the mansion, or even outdoors, but the metal floors of the sub-basement were perpetually _cold_).

Bobby went with her to the elevator, coughing all the way like he had a frog in his throat. She eyed him with concern. "Bobby -" she began.

"It's nothing. I've just been running all over the mansion like a maniac. I'm out of breath." He frowned. "Man, if you just sneeze or sniff anymore, people look at you funny."

He had a point, and Rogue dropped it. The elevator wasn't far from the professor's office, and as they passed, she asked, "Should we knock and see if he's in? Do you think he knows?"

"I think he knows everything that goes on around here," Bobby replied. "But yeah, maybe we should knock, just in case he's in there. And just in case, you know, he doesn't know . . . ."

So they stopped at the door and eyed each other, as if each waiting for the other to do it, then Rogue raised her hand to knock firmly.

* * *

Logan noticed Bobby streaking about the mansion, the stink of fear in the breeze of his passage, and could guess something was up, so he moseyed down to the medbay to find McCoy and his mother working over St. John. Both were gowned heavily and double-gloved. Moving in to help, Logan lifted the boy off the bed so they could get the sheets changed and some plastic over it all. The kid was awake, but too weak to do more than lean his head on Logan's shoulder, blood leaking from his nose. "Shh," Logan said, rather uselessly. He wasn't cut out to comfort people.

While he stood there, Jean came barreling in, just as heavily gowned and slapping gloves over her own hands. "I thought you were in your office?" Hank asked from behind a face mask, his tone bordering on reproach.

"I was up in the garage with Scott." Pulling up her own mask, she grabbed the chart that Edna handed over and glanced at it as she said, "If you need me and can't find me, just _think_ loudly. I know that sounds silly, but if you think loudly at me, I'll hear. So, what's our situation?"

And they devolved into doctor speak with a lot of acronyms. If Jean had noticed Logan, she gave no indication, so he was free to study her for the first time since he'd come back - and since she'd come back.

She didn't smell right.

It wasn't strong, and more powerful scents conflicted with hers in the room - but she didn't smell like Jean. She looked like Jean, moved like Jean, and sounded like Jean, too, with that clipped, almost swallowed enunciation. But she didn't _smell_ like Jean, and the primal part of him reacted instinctively, as if to an imposter.

Except she wasn't. Charles had been certain this _was_ Jean - as were Summers and Winged Boy - and Logan trusted that. Yet her _body_ wasn't the same, and this one smelled differently. His reactions had always been informed as much by scent as sight or sound, unlike most people's. Jean was, for him, a scent stranger, and standing there with a dying boy in his arms, he wondered what else about her wasn't the same?

Summers walked in, and if Jean had been too busy to notice Logan, the kid wasn't. They locked eyes, then Summers shifted subtly closer to Jean as Logan suppressed a sigh. Were they right back to where they'd been a year ago? Before he could react or comment, though, three more people entered, plugging up the entrance**:** Xavier, Rogue, and Bobby.

"Please stay near the door," Hank was saying sharply. "We have a viral containment issue here. Logan may be immune and heal rapidly, but the rest of you need to stay away - even you, Scott."

Reluctantly, Scott joined the other three at the door. Hank and Edna finished the bed, trashing sheets in a biohazard bag as Jean checked IVs. Finally, Logan laid his burden back down on the fresh, plastic-covered sheets and Hank and Jean shooed out everyone except Edna, who watched over John as she washed down equipment and the floor with a Clorox solution. As Logan left, she said, "Don't touch _any_ one and shower immediately. Lots of soap and the hottest water you can stand." Nodding, Logan shut the door behind him.

Turning, he saw that not just the professor and John's friends had arrived, but Magneto as well, looking solemn, and Mystique, who'd come out of her own room, dragging an IV pole. There was much shuffling and clearing of throats as Hank and Jean de-robed well away from the rest. Jean had realized Logan was there now and her face was slightly flushed, but she wouldn't meet his eyes. "So?" Xavier prompted when she and Hank rejoined the rest.

Removing his spectacles, Hank cleaned them on the bottom of his lab coat. "His body has begun hemorrhaging," he replied without looking up. "That's typically been a sign of the disease's final stages, but it's still not severe, and I'm not inclined to give up yet - and want to remind everyone that while percentages do represent trends, there are always exceptions."

"In other words, it ain't over till it's over," Summers said, and McCoy just nodded.

* * *

Hearing McCoy's report, Mystique turned on her heel and went back into the room where St. John lay. McCoy's mother was there, doing nurse-y things. She glanced around as Mystique entered, but continued her work while Mystique took a chair. John turned his head weakly to meet her eyes, but said nothing until the McCoy woman took herself out, then asked simply, "Am I dying?"

Mystique struggled with how to answer. He was just a boy, and for all her impatience with him at times, her desire to make him see the world with enough brutal honesty to protect himself, he _was_ just a boy. If it were her, she'd want to know the truth, but this wasn't her, so she said, "You will be if you don't fight it."

"You've got it, too?"

"I've got it, too."

"I'm sorry. That's my fault, isn't it?"

"Probably," she replied, "but not entirely. I spent enough time in the hospital to know how it was spread, and I saw you in that building with your gloves off. I knew there was at least a possibility you'd contracted it, yet I must have been careless at some point." She didn't point out that he'd been foolish to take off his gloves in the first place. He knew that, and was paying for it now - might pay with his life. She was willing to own up to her own mistakes so he carried less of a burden into the shadowlands.

They were silent a while. She watched him breathe, a rattling sound, interrupted by coughing that brought up blood-flecked spittle. His nose still bled a little. Finally, he said, "If, you know, I don't get over this - um, I just wanted to, um, say 'Thanks.'"

Both her eyebrows rose. "Thanks for what?"

"Trying to teach me. You're a hard ass, and sometimes you're a bitch, but yeah, you tried to teach me how to keep myself alive. Even if I, um, kinda flunked the final exam." He laughed a little at that, then started coughing violently. When it passed, he added, "My grades here were pretty much shit, too, so don't take it personally. I'm just a loser."

Raven breathed out. "If you think you're a loser, you will be. I have no patience for adolescent melodrama. Now, I want you to shut up, rest, conserve your strength, and get well. I don't accept failure as an option. Are we clear?"

He blinked at her, slowly. "Yes, ma'am," he said.

* * *

When the little knot in the medlab dispersed, Charles remained, eying Jean. He didn't intrude on mental privacy, but she was sure he could feel the turmoil in her mind, and Scott's, and truth be told, she preferred facing him at the moment, to Logan, so she said, "Professor, Hank, if Scott and I could see both of you for a moment in my office?"

They followed her down the little hallway and she let them in. Long ago, she'd cleared a path for the professor's wheelchair. Scott and Hank both settled on the couch, and she sat at her desk. Then she told Charles and Hank about her meeting with Nathaniel Essex, and Scott set the digital recorder on the corner of her desk, hitting play, so they could all hear some of the conversation from earlier. When Jean was done, and before either Hank or Charles could intervene, Scott laid out his own plans, and if Jean had struggled to contain both her rage and shock, Scott sounded as if he were discussing the weather. Jean envied his equilibrium, even while she was suspicious of it. Scott was entirely too good at burying his emotions.

When he was done, no one said anything for a while. The professor was clearly thinking. Hank just seemed stunned by Essex's unconscionable terms. Finally, Xavier asked, "Jean, is it possible for you to do what Scott suggested?"

She tilted her head to the side even as she recognized that as her classic gesture of reluctance. "Yes, I think so."

He nodded. "Then let me suggest that this plan has tentative merit, but there are serious risks."

Jean's eyes flicked to Scott, who'd sat up a little, as if ready to protest.

"First, and whatever you think, Scott, I believe Dr. Essex will, indeed, by highly suspicious of a change in our attitudes. In fact, I doubt he _expected_ Jean to agree. In fact, I suspect that he assumed she wouldn't, and may have enjoyed horrifying her."

Jean blinked. She hadn't even thought of that. "He was toying with me?"

"Indeed. Whatever he says, Dr. Essex's behavior does strikes me as psychopathic; a combination of easy boredom with a tendency to manipulative behavior is a characteristic of the disorder, as is excessive ego. He enjoys the thought that he could betray Shaw if he so chose, and dangle the carrot in front of you, to obtain what he wants. He doesn't believe he will suffer consequences, and is certain of his own intellectual superiority in outwitting us all. We should, I think, assume he will be just as inclined to double-cross - which is the primary danger in playing his game."

"You don't think he'll give us the vaccine," Scott said.

"I think it possible he won't, but not certain. Second, I find it unlikely that he would consent to come here in order to perform the harvesting of Jean's ova. If he is in contact with Emma Frost, then he will know that I, too, am a telepath, and however much he may trust in his natural 'white noise,' I doubt he will place himself within my grasp, or within ours. We cannot assume he is unaware of the existence of the X-Men. In fact, we should assume that whatever Emma knows about us, Essex knows. Furthermore, as he admitted to Jean, he has access to all of our medical records - including mine. Right now, the only people we may assume him unaware of are Kurt Wagner and Doug Ramsey - as well as Jean's altered powers. But that, at least, he appears to have anticipated as a possibility.

"In any case, if we pursue Scott's plan, I can virtually guarantee that he will demand compliance at his facilities, not ours. I think it imperative that Scott _not_ go into the lion's den, so to speak." Again, Scott sat up on the couch, intending to object, but Xavier raised a hand. "Precautions. Jean will have to go - you do not. She can take your sample with her. Furthermore, we can't bank on Essex not having discovered a way to hold her, if he so chooses. While he may have underestimated her power, we should not make that same error in underestimating his. Thus, if we do enact this plan - and, as I said, I think the basic idea has merit - I will ask Doug to fashion some kind of transmitter for Jean."

"Charles, I'm a telepath -"

"Exactly. And Essex will expect you to rely on that -"

"Therefore, _we_ don't rely on it," Scott finished, nodding.

"I will ask Doug to include a tiny camera, then - should something go wrong - Kurt can teleport in to retrieve you. I understand Herr Wagner must be able to see where he is going, lest he teleport into a wall, which is the reason for the camera. Even if Essex does discover and confiscate it, we may still get enough of an image for Kurt to use. And as I said, Kurt is one member of our staff about whom Essex does _not_ know, in order to compensate for."

"I could just _blast_ my way in," Scott said dryly.

"And possibly kill innocent lab techs or others in the process."

Jean could _feel_ Scott's frustration, even while she knew he wouldn't harm anyone who wasn't proven guilty. "So we're going to do it?" Jean asked.

"I'm not yet certain, but it is worth considering. I'm simply unsure whether the risk is worth the possible payoff, as I have my doubts that Dr. Essex will play fair any more than we intend to."

Sighing, Scott shifted and cracked his knuckles. "So we're just going to sit here and not at least try?"

Hank, who'd heretofore been silent, cleared his throat. "If I may? There could be an alternative. Dr. Essex indicated that he has given this vaccine to Shaw and his associates, including Emma Frost. If Warren may have been unable to solicit Emma's agreement to testify against Essex, I think it clear she has misgivings. She might be willing to provide us with a blood sample, or - preferably - a lymph node biopsy."

Jean whipped her head around. "I didn't even _think_ of that."

The professor perked up at this. "And you could then work backwards to a cure?"

"We might. I prefer it to cloak-and-dagger exercises - especially cloak-and-dagger exercises that would endanger one of our own to, perhaps, no concrete purpose."

"So how do we get hold of Emma?" Jean asked. "War?"

"Leave that to me," Xavier said.

* * *

A little after nine in the evening, John's hemorrhaging advanced from a trickle to a full-fledged breakdown of his capillaries. Blood began to seep from everywhere**:** his mouth, nose, internal organs, and even his eyes and ears. He was literally bleeding to death. Bobby and Marie, who'd been haunting the medlab, were sent upstairs. This was ugly, and John had lapsed into a state of unconsciousness that precluded any conversation. Jean Grey came down, along with McCoy's mother, all shuffling about doing medical things. Both Logan and Mystique were there. They eyed each other warily from opposite corners of the room, each feeling helpless - not a condition either tolerated well, Mystique thought. She wasn't sure why she was here, except to witness. She felt responsible, and she thought Logan might feel the same.

They weren't so different, even on opposite sides.

By eleven in the evening, Charles had been called, and he brought a carefully gloved and gowned Erik. Mystique nodded to the latter when he entered, and he nodded back, going over to the bed to take a seat near the (plastic-covered) pillow - and to hell with the medical bustling. There was no saving John now. Erik took the boy's hand and gripped it, letting touch take the place of words. What was left to say? John wasn't conscious anyway, which might have been a blessing.

He died a little after midnight. Grey called the death at 12:11, though Mystique thought the boy had been gone a full ten minutes before.

McCoy raised the sheet over his face with an almost archaic air of respect, and for a moment, everyone in the room - X-Man or Brotherhood - was united in both grief and horror. This death hadn't been poetically tragic. It had, at the end, been simply disgusting, and _sad_. "Damn Essex," McCoy muttered softly.

Mystique wondered if she could get her hands on this elusive Dr. Nathaniel Essex? But that would have to wait until she was well again. And she would be well. She refused to accept a denouement like St. John Allerdyce's.

She made her way back to her room, trailed - rather to her surprise - by Jean Grey. "Come to make sure I didn't dislocate my IVs?"

"No," Grey answered. She studied Mystique a long while, then asked, "If we had a plan to get the cure to this virus, would you help?"

Mystique narrowed her eyes. "What do you know?"

"I can't tell you now. But can you copy me?"

Mystique considered, then morphed into an exact copy of Jean Grey. "Will this do?"

Grey smiled slightly. "Perfectly." Then the smile fell away. "I don't know that it'll be necessary, but I'll let you know."

Mystique was back across the room faster than Grey and expected, gripping her arm. "What are you planning?"

Grey frowned. "I don't know that we're really planning anything, but -" She paused, eyes meeting Mystique's. "You cared about him, too. I can respect that. Right now, you're not well enough to do anything, but maybe . . . ," She glanced off. "I'll let you know."

And turning on her heel, she left Mystique in the other private room. Curled in a chair, Mystique thought about what Grey had said for a long time after the other woman had left.

* * *

Jean and Scott hadn't gotten to bed until almost three in the morning, but were waked two hours later by an urgent pounding on their door. Scott jerked up and rose to answer, dressed in sleep shorts and a t-shirt. Jean followed, floating a robe after her as she walked.

The person on the other side, looking wild-eyed, was Piotr Rasputin. "Bobby's got it," was all he said, before turning and hurrying back down the hall to the room he shared with Bobby Drake, throwing open the door. Right on his heels, Jean darted in; she could hear Bobby in the bathroom, retching. Hurrying to his side, she put the back of her hand to his neck in a time-honored method of temperature testing. "You're burning up."

"It's probably just a summer flu," he said, but his eyes were scared. Jean knelt down next to him while Piotr and Scott hovered behind in the door to the in-suite restroom.

"You know we have to go down to the lab," she told him.

There was a hesitation, then he nodded and let her help him up with her TK. Turning, they exited. She looked at Piotr, meeting his eyes. "You, too."

Piotr's face was chalky, but he nodded. He was a responsible boy.

"This can't be Legacy," Bobby was saying. "I haven't been around anyone I could get it from - except John. And I was careful, Dr. Grey. Really, really careful."

She patted his shoulder as they headed down to the elevator. "If it is just a flu, Bobby, we'll know that soon." Privately, she sent to Scott. _He's right. Even if he was careless and somehow became contaminated by John, the incubation period hasn't been long enough, especially as Bobby has a second-generation X-gene. It should take him_ longer _to fall ill anyway._

_Could the virus be mutating? _ Scott asked as he hit the elevator call button, one hand surreptitiously under Piotr's elbow, as much for emotional support at literal. Jean could only pray Piotr hadn't caught it, as he didn't have Bobby's luck in the DNA department.

_No,_ she told Scott now. _This virus isn't likely to mutate for some time. _ She hesitated. _Scott - if this_ is _Legacy, someone else at the mansion has to have it . . . and gave it to Bobby._

Scott shot her a startled, horrified look, and she was glad the two of them were standing at the elevator rear where the boys couldn't see.

_Holy Mother . . . Who, Jean? We've got to get whoever it is isolated_ right now_. _ _Why aren't they sick already?_

_I have no idea._

She reached then to wake both the professor and Hank, telepathically. _I'm sorry to disturb you, but I have very bad news. We may have the seeds of an epidemic on our hands . . . ._

* * *

The professor called the students into the dining hall at seven o'clock on Tuesday morning. Rogue, Jubilee and Kitty arrived bleary eyed and grumpy, but also on edge. "If the professor drug us out of bed at the crack of dawn, this can't be good, can it?" Rogue asked her roommates, thinking of St. John.

"I just want some coffee," Jubilee replied, burying her face in her hands, but there was no coffee to be had and instead of breakfast at the sideboards, Drs. Grey and McCoy, along with Mrs. McCoy, had spread out some medical equipment.

"Definitely ain't good," Rogue said, and glanced around for Bobby and Piotr, but didn't see either of them. Why did they get to stay in bed?

"I'm afraid I have some very bad news," the professor began as sleepy and somber students found seats at the long tables. "A little after midnight, St. John Allerdyce succumbed to Legacy."

He paused for respect, and Rogue raised a hand to her mouth, sobbing once. She'd known John's death was probably inevitable when Dr. McCoy had sent them out last night, but had hoped she or Bobby would've been called before the absolute end. Anger flared that they hadn't been.

"Whatever John's choices after Alkali Lake, he was a student here for far longer, and he will be missed." Another pause, though he was clearly not finished, and Rogue felt the chill of fear grip her belly. "I regret to say that this morning, a little after five o'clock, Bobby Drake was taken to the infirmary with flu-like symptoms. As all of you know, that is how Legacy first manifests."

"Oh, no," Rogue whispered even as Jubilee's hand shot over to grip her wrist and Kitty raised hands to her cheeks, muttering, "Pete?"

But Xavier said nothing about Piotr, instead he waited a second or two for the reactions of fear to die down, then continued, "I want to point out that the incubation period was not sufficient for Bobby to have caught Legacy from St. John. Thus, his symptoms may, indeed, be exactly what they seem - a summer flu. Nonetheless, and in light of circumstances, we think it best to take blood samples from all of you as a precaution, to be certain the virus has not somehow penetrated the mansion unawares. In the meantime, all of you should refrain from sharing anything that may contain body fluids - no drinking after each other, no sharing toothbrushes, etcetera. Remember, the virus _cannot_ be passed through the air or through simple touch - so there is no need to _panic_ , merely to be cautious. Please, all of you take tissues on the way out of the hall today and keep them in your pockets, in case you need to cough or sneeze for any reason. Wash your hands before eating, and after using the bathroom. Drs. McCoy and Grey promise results by the end of today, at which point - with all luck - our precautions may be lifted."

Well, Rogue thought, that was a little reassuring, but only a little. "If Bobby couldn't've got Legacy from St. John, it must really be a flu," she muttered.

To her right, Kitty replied softly, "He may not have gotten it from John, but that doesn't mean someone else here doesn't have it."

"_Who?_ " Jubilee hissed. "The teachers haven't let us out of the house in a week."

"One of the adults," Kitty replied.

That shut up Jubilee, and made Rogue's stomach drop. Involuntarily, she looked around the hall for Logan, found him standing at the back - near the doors - with Kurt Wagner. Herr Wagner was fingering his crucifix.

"Now," Xavier was saying, "I'd like all of you to please line up, those with last names from A to G for Mrs. McCoy, those with last names from H to P for Dr. Grey, and those with last names from R to Z for Dr. McCoy. This shouldn't take long."

There was a hesitation, eyes slid sideways to look at others, as if gauging the wisdom of outright refusal. Then Jubilee got to her feet and headed for Dr. Grey. "The faster this is done, the faster I get to eat," she said. "Then go back to bed."

There was nervous laughter, and with a glance at Kitty, Rogue rose to follow Jubilee. They were junior X-Men. It was their job to set a precedent.

But on the way out of the hall after, Rogue approached Herr Wagner, who smiled at her shyly and - as was his wont - avoided her eyes. "Excuse me," she said softly. "I wondered if you'd, uh - if you'd do me a favor?"

"Certainly, if I may."

"Would you, uh, say a prayer - for Bobby. And St. John, too?" She wasn't sure why she thought God might listen to him more than to her, but she did.

Kurt's smile was sad. "I will pray for both their souls, _Liebes_ - and for all of us, _oder_ ?"

Reaching out spontaneously, she gripped both his odd hands in hers. The fingers were bulky, but warm and surprisingly soft. "Thank you," she said fervently. He just squeezed her hands back.

* * *

Artie and Terry were playing foosball in the den, mostly ignoring the TV - which seemed to be permanently set to news channels of late - until a familiar name caught their attention.

". . . Warren Worthington the Third of Worthington Enterprises was rushed to Cornell University Hospital late last night. The hospital has not released any official statements, and the family hasn't returned calls, but anonymous sources say that Worthington was found unconscious in his Fifth-Avenue apartment and is exhibiting symptoms associated with the deadly mutant virus, Legacy. The Worthington family is known in New York for their support of the arts, as well as their humanitarian generosity. While the younger Worthington is not a _known_ mutant, his long-standing friendship with the Mutant Rights Activist, Dr. Jean Grey - who died in a car crash during the Blackout - _is_ a matter of public record. There has been a great deal of speculation today as to whether Mr. Worthington - who shuns the public spotlight due to a mild spinal deformity - may, in fact, be concealing a mutation . . . ."

Artie had stopped playing the minute Mr. Worthington's name was mentioned, and stared at the TV. Then he turned to look at Terry. Words weren't needed at all. Both of them dashed out the den door, Terry shouting (thankfully not at full volume), "Professor! Mr. Summers! Mr. Worthington's in the hospital! They think he's got Legacy!"

* * *

**Notes:** In the comics, Nathaniel Essex - better known as Mr. Sinister (a very silly name) - was born in Victorian England, a scientist and physician, who became a friend of Charles Darwin. He developed a rather unhealthy interest in human evolution via a combination of Darwin's writings and the death of his son, eventually becoming a brilliant geneticist. He is not, in the comics, a natural mutant, but a product of genetic engineering connected to Apocalypse. For movieverse, I revised his origin heavily, but I rather liked the idea that he's "immortal," and this disconnection from death has affected his morality - or lack thereof. Essex is so interesting because he combines age/experience, intellectual brilliance, and a total lack of human feeling. Ororo's opacity to telepathic probing is comic canon.


	34. In the Valley of the Shadow of Death

Chauffeured and dressed to the nines, Emma Frost arrived at Xavier's on Wednesday morning for the first time since graduating three years before. Escorted by a personal assistant, she was met in the main hall by a frazzled Jean Grey, whose hair was pulled back messily in a barrette and whose face wore a minimum of makeup. From his place half-concealed in the gym doorway, Logan watched their meeting, deciding Jean still outshown the girl like gold to pyrite.

"Thank you for coming, Emma," Jean said, gracious as always. "If you'll follow me downstairs? We won't need much of your time."

Logan considered following them to the medlab, but headed instead for Xavier's office. The door was half-open and the man was on the phone, looking frustrated. Logan knocked and Xavier waved him in, saying into the receiver, "Thank you for your time," and hung up.

"That Frost kid's here," Logan told him.

"Yes, I felt her arrive but shall leave her to Jean and Hank; I need to reach Ken Worthington. We want Warren to be brought here, but the hospital is raising hurdles. They don't want to release him to a private clinic. Ken may need to exert pressure."

"Why can't Winged Boy just sign himself out?" Logan asked.

"Normally, he could, but as his condition stems from infection by a potentially epidemic virus, it's not quite so easy."

Logan grunted at that. "How bad're _we_ infected?"

"Given the results of yesterday morning's tests, Jean and Hank say that roughly half the student body will come down with the virus. It could be worse. Although I frequently chid Warren for his reluctance to talk with the students, it may have slowed down the initial spread. Warren's main contacts have been with adults, and his two closest - Jean and Scott - are immune. Bobby has been a more significant vector for the virus' spread."

"How the hell did Winged Boy _get_ it? He don't exactly run in the Bronx."

"Your guess is as good as mine."

Logan scratched his chin. He felt badly for Warren, but as he'd scarcely spoken with the guy, he was a lot more concerned about the effect of Worthington's probable demise on people Logan did know. As soon as the news had broken last night, Summers had gone tearing out of the mansion on his bike at top speed, headed for Cornell Medical Center (because he could and Jean couldn't), while Jean had collapsed in a heap in her office, bawling her eyes out. Logan had considered going in to talk to her, but what could he say? Sorry?

It wasn't just Jean and Scott. Hank's shoulders were bowed even more, and Logan had spotted Ororo sitting in the dark den last night, crying softly, while Kurt had gone up to sit on the roof alone. Meanwhile, Chuck was spending a lot of frowning hours on the phone, trying to get Winged Boy released into Jean and Hank's care. Not that it would do any good, but at least Worthington could die here.

Xavier was talking again, using information as a way to distance himself from the extent of the catastrophe. "Jean and Hank have already changed sleeping arrangements so that the uninfected students are in previously unoccupied rooms on the third floor. At least the younger generation are twice as likely to have a second generation X-gene. Of the 31 infected, only 11 are first-generation X-gene mutants."

"Do they know?"

Xavier's lips thinned. "No, most do not. And don't ask me if that's ethical; I've wrestled with the question all morning. So far, only one of them has begun to show signs of illness - Piotr."

"Pete knows."

"Yes, he does. And I am considering telling at least the older students, or permitting them to inquire if they wish to know. But some of them . . . Logan, Terry Roark is only _13_ . She was sent to me by a very old friend, so I could keep her safe -"

Xavier stopped speaking abruptly and rubbed at his eyes, and Logan got to his feet to pace. He couldn't fight a goddamn _bug_ . In this, he was as useless as Xavier.

"No, Logan," Xavier said softly, "You are not useless - far from it. We will need you. Hank has informed me that he can use serum from both you and Emma Frost that might allow those infected to have a fighting chance. And there is at least one who we know you _can_ save."

Logan glanced up. "Marie's got it?" Xavier nodded. "Why didn't she come to me?" Logan demanded - loudly. "I told her to come to me!"

"She's not yet exhibiting symptoms, and I think she wishes to care for the ill as best she can. If you heal her immediately, she will have to go to the third floor with the others." Xavier breathed out softly. "She feels guilt, Logan, because she will live while others will die. I understand that you wish to protect her, but permit her to give what she can, as long as she can."

* * *

Rogue had been helping Edna McCoy ready the surgery room with extra beds for the students who would soon be occupying them, then they filled out order forms for more IV poles and monitors, hospital gowns and bed sheets - not to mention Clorox for sterilizing. "I think we're finished here," Mrs. McCoy said finally. "Why don't you run on, hon?" Which was her polite way of saying she wanted to be alone for a while. She'd been tearing up all morning, what with the news about poor Mr. Worthington.

If the death of John had hurt Rogue more, John's earlier defection to the Brotherhood had left the student body with a complicated grief. By contrast, Mr. Worthington was one of the good guys, and they weren't supposed to die, even while Rogue knew very well that they did . . . and they didn't usually come back nine months later, either. "Life isn't very fair, is it?" she asked Mrs. McCoy now as she set down the medical supplies catalogue.

"No," Mrs. McCoy said.

Rogue started to leave, then turned to hug the older woman impulsively - careful to cover her skin with cloth. Mrs. McCoy hugged her back, and Rogue headed out through the main medbay even as Dr. Grey entered with some blonde chick. Rogue might have been jealous of the girl's hair - a spectacular cascade of thick, curling, pale gold - but she was dressed as skankily as a Hollywood starlet, and even more starved-looking. Didn't these rich girls eat? Her expression said she didn't want to be there, and Rogue was pretty sure she wasn't a new student. Curious, Rogue sidled over to the exam table on which Dr. Grey had the other girl sitting. "Hey," Rogue said softly to Dr. Grey. "Mrs. McCoy and I got the stuff ordered. Can I help here?"

Dr. Grey's smile was tight. "Thank you, but that's all we need right now. Why don' t you go visit Bobby or Jubilee?"

"Jubilee?" the blonde girl asked in a sneering, New York accent. "So the little Chinkerbell is still hanging around? What - did she fail a grade?"

Jaw dropping, Rogue stared, then snapped back, "Shut your racist mouth, you Yankee bitch."

"What's this? A Southern belle who accuses _me_ of being racist?"

"Rogue! Emma! That's quite enough!"

And Rogue felt her mouth _shut_ . She couldn't have opened it if she'd wanted to, and from the look on the other girl's face, she was experiencing the same problem. _Dr. Grey_ was doing it. For an instant, Rogue was utterly terrified and every muscle in her body seized in reaction. Then the pressure disappeared and she could work her jaw again as she fell back a step, staring at Dr. Grey. Still sitting on the medical bed, Emma - it must be the infamous Emma Frost - appeared to be just as angry, but not so flabbergasted. She'd narrowed her eyes at Dr. Grey, but neither she nor Rogue spoke again. Dr. Grey appeared both furious and tired. "Rogue, thank you for your help, but I'd like to take some samples from Emma now, so I need to get to work." And she turned away, dismissing Rogue firmly.

And although Rogue knew she'd been out of line, Dr. Grey had just taken control of her _body_. It had been only for a moment, and she hadn't made Rogue do anything wrong - had made her _stop_ doing something wrong, in fact (even if the bitch _had_ insulted her friend) - but would Professor Xavier have done something like that? Even when John had started a fire at the Smithsonian and Bobby had stopped it, the professor had only frozen onlookers so they wouldn't see. He hadn't frozen John or Bobby. He'd scolded them.

(But - a little voice in her head asked - what about all those frozen onlookers who hadn't been involved at all? Wasn't that worse, in a way?)

Troubled, she headed for Bobby's room. He occupied the same one that John had earlier, and Rogue found him turned on his side, facing the wall. "Hey," she said.

"Hey." He didn't look around.

"How're you feeling?"

"Like I was hit by a truck. Head hurts, muscles hurt, throat hurts, and I'm _hot_ ." A sneeze interrupted him. "I keep sneezing, too." He still hadn't rolled over, so Rogue dragged a chair around to where she could see his face, then reached out to take his hand.

He jerked it back. "Don't."

"Don't what?" she asked, confused. "I'm wearing gloves."

"_You_ broke up with _me_ . I don't need a pity reconciliation."

She resisted rolling her eyes. "Bobby, I ain't trying to be your girlfriend again." And she wasn't. If she'd had any doubts about her decision to leave him, his falling ill had ended them. She was worried about him, to be sure, but she was worried about Jubilee the same - and worried most of all for Piotr. "Second, you're not gonna die, okay?"

"I _may_ not die."

"_Probably_ won't," she corrected.

He was silent a while, his eyes back on the wall, not her face. "Thinking about Johnny?" she asked finally.

He didn't reply for so long, she thought he wouldn't, but finally, he said, "Actually, I was thinking about Warren."

"You heard the news?"

"Yeah."

"They're saying he must've been the one who gave it to you."

"About a week ago, he and I were both up late. I'd never talked to him much, even though he's always been around, and nice enough. So we chatted a while, ate ice cream - but not out of the same bowl or anything. And he was drinking vodka, which he wouldn't let me have any of, so it's not like I drank after him, either -"

He stopped abruptly. "But he did touch me. Still - how could he give me the virus just by touching my hand? It's not that easy to pass. You and I spent more time with Johnny."

"And we always washed up really well afterwards." Rogue shrugged. "Maybe you rubbed your eye or something right after he touched you. It don't really matter now, does it - the how?"

"I guess not."

"You mad at him?"

"Why would I be mad at him? It's not like he meant to give it to me, or even knew he had it." He shut his eyes again. "And I can tell, from what they're saying - he's got that early X-gene, doesn't he? He's going to die like Johnny did."

Rogue couldn't deny it. "Scott went into the city, to be with him."

Bobby was quiet a while, then said, very softly, "I hope Scott's got more courage than I did."

Frowning, Rogue leaned forward and gripped Bobby's wrist again. "Don't you dare talk like that! You have plenty of courage, Bobby Drake. It was Dr. McCoy who sent us out that night, before John died. We didn't ask to go."

And Bobby laughed, high and tightly. "That wasn't what I meant."

"Then what did you mean?"

Once again, it was a long time before Bobby replied. "I never told him."

"Told him what? That he had an early X-gene?"

Bobby shook his head almost violently against the pillow, and his eyes opened again. They were wet. His mouth opened, shut, opened once more. "I don't know how to say it."

For a long moment, Rogue had no idea what he was talking about - then she understood. She had, after all, absorbed him. She'd never dug much into his memories (had felt too ambivalent about what she might find), but the shade of Bobby in her head now gave her the answer the real Bobby couldn't vocalize, and she understood it all**:** Bobby's towering rage at John when the latter had left, their closeness before, as well as Bobby's sexual reticence when she'd been dating him. He hadn't been reluctant, exactly, but had vacillated between extreme interest and an almost absentminded forgetfulness. Now, her sudden comprehension left her feeling . . . strange. Not angry, or even surprised quite, just strange, as if she'd somehow missed the obvious when it was right under her nose. "You loved him."

Bobby didn't reply, but his eyes said enough. Rising, Rogue walked out. It would take some time for her to sort through exactly what she was feeling. But passing by Piotr's room, soft voices interrupted her thoughts and she shoved the door open without knocking, surprising an insubstantial Kitty - wearing no gloves or scrubs - 'sitting' on the edge of Piotr's bed. "What are you doing in here?" Rogue demanded. "You ain't wearing any protection!"

"Shhh!" Piotr and Kitty said together, and Rogue slammed the door behind her. "I can't get the virus when I'm phased," Kitty explained.

"How do you know you can't get it? You just think so!"

"I can't!" Kitty retorted.

"I reckon you better leave that up to Dr. Grey or Dr. McCoy," Rogue scolded. "Now, get out of here before I tell 'em you snuck in."

Kitty glared, but Pete said, "She's got a point, Katya. Go."

Kitty turned and looked back at him, and the desperation in her face struck Rogue through the heart. Piotr knew what his chances were - and Kitty must know, too, just like Bobby and John, or Scott and Mr. Worthington. "Come on, sugar," Rogue said more softly. "Go back upstairs before somebody else catches you down here. I'll talk to Logan or Mrs. McCoy - see if they'll let you come visit as long as you take precautions. And wash up when you get back, even if you've been phased the whole time."

The look Kitty (and Piotr) threw her was enough thanks, and Rogue watched Kitty fade back through a hospital-room wall. When she was gone, and before Rogue could move on to check on Jubilee, Pete said, "Look after her, Marie." And the use of her real name, not her codename, leant the request a solemn weight.

"I will," Rogue promised before backing out and shutting the door behind her. Then she just stood there, hand on the knob, looking down at the blue rubber of her glove. It wasn't until something wet fell on it that she realized she was crying.

* * *

For all her prickly personality, Emma Frost bore the lymph node biopsy with surprising good will, Hank thought. Yet when he murmured as much to Jean as they stored tissue samples, she replied telepathically, _She damn well better. Even if she didn't make this virus, she consented to it. She may as well have slit the throats of the people who've died - or who will die._

Hank felt the air crackle and her hair lifted slightly, but she was also swallowing convulsively. She must be thinking of Warren. _I know what's she's done,_ Hank sent back. _I don't absolve her of it, but she is young, and she_ is _here. She may give us a way to replicate the vaccine._

_In three or four days? That's all he's got left, Hank. Three or four days - if we're lucky, and even if we got the vaccine_ right now_, it probably wouldn't help him. He's too far along. _ The air still crackled, but she sobbed once, hard, and covered her mouth.

_We'll take some blood to get a serum, too. That may be enough to slow down the virus and give their immune systems time to mount a response ,_ Hank said. _Now, I'll take care of the rest. You take a break._

But Jean shook her head, and stalked back to the exam table where Emma lay, staring up at the metal ceiling. "How did he get it?" she demanded, and Hank hurried over in case he needed to intervene. He hated to admit it, but he was a bit afraid of what she might do.

"How did _who_ get _what_ ?" Emma asked. "Proper nouns do so facilitate conversation, don't you think?"

"_Warren. _ And don't tell me you didn't hear he's in the hospital; every TV station in New York has mentioned it. But he hasn't been in contact with anyone who had Legacy!"

Emma turned her head enough to look at Jean. "Oh, I heard about it. Sebastian must have had him infected."

"_What? _ And you didn't _stop_ him?"

The electric fire in the air ignited and Jean was suddenly swathed in flames. Hank - having seen it before - took a few judicious steps back, but Emma nearly fell off the bed, trying to get away, the thin, paper hospital wrap gripped tightly to her nakedness more in fear than to protect her (seemingly non-existent) modesty. Her blue eyes were huge. "What the fuck -?"

"Jean," Hank said, and Jean realized what she'd done. The fires whooshed out.

"You didn't know," Jean said, sounding defeated.

"Of course I didn't," Emma snapped, eyes still wide and the med table still between herself and Jean. "I'm sure Sebastian had Nathaniel do it when we were at breakfast. Nathaniel was sitting right beside him; slipping something into his coffee would've been easy."

"Why?" Jean demanded. "Did Shaw really want to keep War from becoming White King that much?"

"It wasn't about being White King, you fool." Emma straightened. "The goal was to expose him as a mutant. It's business - nothing personal."

Jean literally hissed like an angry cat - or a blaze quenching - and spun to stalk off down the hallway towards her office, her heels clicking out a tattoo beat on the medbay tile.

Emma turned her eyes on Hank. "What is she? She was dead, but now she's not. What _is_ she?"

"She's Jean Grey," Hank replied, because it was the only answer he had. "You're free to go. Thank you."

Emma flipped her hair, as if afraid to show appreciation, but Hank thought she was glad to have been thanked - and to have helped.

* * *

It was sometime late Wednesday morning when Warren awoke from a drugged doze to feel the weight of a head on his side and hear Scott snoring softly. Without opening his eyes, he raised a hand to run fingers through the soft hair, heard the snores stop, and felt Scott stir. The weight lifted, and Warren opened his eyes. "Sorry, I didn't mean to fall asleep on you," Scott said.

"You should go home and fall asleep in your own bed."

"Not until they let you come with me."

Warren resisted rolling his eyes and sat up a little, flexing stiff wing muscles. Feathers rustled. His wings made a hospital bed horribly uncomfortable - which was why he'd never stayed in one before (even secretly) - yet brought in by ambulance as he'd been, the proverbial cat was now out of the bag. From what he understood, news of his startling mutation - or even the fact he _was_ a mutant - had certainly been mentioned in the media, but not harped on. They weren't sparing him; no, everyone was hoping for an exclusive interview. For the moment, Warren wasn't granting any - though he also hadn't refused outright. The longer he could spin out hopes, the more time his publicists had to prepare for the inevitable. He knew he couldn't keep it up much longer, but he preferred to control what was said, and when, as far as he could. "Anything interesting happen while I was asleep?" he asked now.

"Not that I've heard, except that Emma did show up at the mansion for a biopsy."

"Good for her."

"Don't congratulate her, War. She doesn't deserve it. I'd like to wring her pretty little neck."

"As long as it was you who did it, she'd probably consent."

"Oh, shut up," Scott replied, rising to pace around again. "She was - and is - a _kid_ ."

"Hasn't stopped Shaw."

"I'm not Shaw!" Scott was getting red in the face, but from anger not embarrassment.

"I'm _joking_ , Gamma Gaze," Warren said softly. "You're nothing like Shaw. Nothing."

Scott came back to the bed and sat down again, taking one of Warren's hands and squeezing it. Scott didn't touch much, and Warren gripped back, saying, "The morning-shift nurse thinks we're lovers, you know." He spoke lightly, but it was a warning. He might not be entirely selfless, but his own sense of decency required him to point out the obvious to Scott.

Scott just shrugged. "I don't give a damn what the nurses think."

"You should go home and get some sleep -"

"- I slept on the couch -"

"- in a _bed_ ," Warren finished. "I'm not dying yet. Don't exhaust yourself for no reason."

Letting go of Warren's hand, Scott sat back. "And the kids call _me_ coldly practical."

"You are practical. Go get some sleep. Jean's going to need you, too."

* * *

"With these samples from Emma, we have some real hope," Hank said, sitting down with a bowl of cereal and glass of milk in the storage closet they'd cleared out to give him a temporary office. Doug Ramsey sat across from him, also eating breakfast - one that included grits. There was no accounting for taste, Hank thought. "First," Hank continued, "we now have a serum to give those already infected that might allow them to recover sooner, or at least slow their deterioration. Serum therapy can result in some severe reactions, but under the circumstances, it's worth the risk. Unfortunately, we have a limited supply, even using Logan as an additional source. Scott's body kills the virus too fast, and Jean simply seems able to shield herself. I could use serum from recovered mutants, but we have only one such currently**:** Mystique. And she's still too ill."

"What about the ones in hospitals . . . ?"

"The CDC thinks I'm still here to put together Jean's notes. I can't show up at a hospital to take serum without arousing suspicion. I'd have to steal it." He shrugged. "It might come to that."

"If it does, I'll help. I can get you past any security."

Had the situation been less grim, Hank might have laughed. "Listen to us - two teacher's pets plotting petty theft." But he was too busy to feel guilty. Guilt would have to take a number. "In any case, given our limited supply, we must decide whether the serum goes to those who already have a chance of recovery, as it'd make their recovery more certain - or to those with less resistance, hoping it'd give them a fighting chance."

"You mean it could make a difference for early X-genes?" Doug asked, surprised.

"It _could_ , yes, by allowing them to fight off the worst of the symptoms long enough for them to produce sufficient antibodies on their own - essentially giving them the same edge as a second-generation mutant. But probably not as strong of an edge, and therein lies the rub. I don't know if it'd be enough for them to survive. Even second-generation mutants have no guarantee." Hank removed his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. "This isn't a silver bullet, and we have 11 early X-gene students who've been infected. That doesn't count adults. We might not have enough for all of them, it'll depend on how fast people fall ill, and as I said, it may not make any difference. Then I'd have nothing left to give the others. Even with Logan's healing factor, there's only so much blood I can take from him a day."

"What's the other option this gives us?" Doug asked.

"We may be lucky enough to grow the actual vaccine from Emma's samples. We'll do a PCR on the lymph node tissue, see if we can pick up a sufficient amount of the vaccine from cellular DNA. We'll also be looking at samples from mutants who've recovered, such as Mystique, and those who didn't. This is where I'll need your unique talents in order to analyze the cellular and antibody immune responses in vaccinated versus recovered patients - see which ones figure most significantly. You can also compare the DNA sequence of the virus to whatever sequences we get from the vaccine, if we're lucky with the biopsy . "

In fact, Doug was involved because of his extraordinary ability to find patterns. Jean and Hank had not asked for his assistance - had tried to refuse it. Working in the medbay near infected patients would increase Doug's chances of contracting the virus. "I know how to take precautions," he'd argued yesterday, "and - begging your pardon - you need me."

A startled (and skeptical) Jean had asked, "Why?"

So Doug had recited for them the flicker rate of a malfunctioning fluorescent light in the corner, the color distribution of Ororo's begonias in the gardens outside, the number of steps in every staircase in the house and how all were divisible by three, and the pattern on Xavier's tie - from four days ago. Jean and Hank had simply blinked, then sat him down to explain both viral biology and the four levels of BSL containment procedures.

"An additional problem," Hank was saying now, "is that even those who recover from the viral infection will still be contagious in much the same way an HIV positive person is contagious - which will make school living arrangements tricky, at least until we have a vaccine in hand."

"Assuming the virus doesn't mutate into something else," Doug said while studying Legacy's DNA code - no doubt memorizing it on sight. Even Hank didn't have an eidetic memory, and he was fascinated by Doug's.

"I'm afraid it is almost certain the virus will mutate - eventually. Fortunately for us, its engineered nature means that large sections of its RNA have been removed and replaced with filovirus proteins. That fixes it more permanently, and will give us a head start. Once we have a vaccine isolated, we can build on that knowledge."

Doug just nodded, setting aside the printout. He turned blue eyes on Hank. "Who of the adults is _un_infected? I need to know how many of us will still be on our feet in a week."

Frowning, Hank kept his eyes on his cereal bowl. "You. Jean, Logan, and Scott. My mother, who is not a mutant. And Erik Lehnsherr."

He looked up in time to catch Doug blink. "_All_ of the rest of you?"

"Apparently. Warren may not have had much contact with the students, but he did spend time with the adults."

"And how many of you are . . . like me?"

"The professor."

Doug turned his head to stare at the DNA printout he'd just set down, but Hank didn't think he was seeing it. "Has anyone told him?"

"I did, as soon as I knew."

"Who else knows?"

"Only myself and my mother. And now you. That was how Charles wanted it. Well, not you and I, in particular, but he didn't want Jean or Scott to be told yet, or Ororo."

"They have to know . . . ."

"He assured me he will tell them, but not until he's updated his affairs. A combination of his age and DNA type make it unlikely he'll be able to fight the infection for long, even with serum."

* * *

"Hey."

Jean looked up from where she knelt on the floor of her office, paper spread all around her, to find Scott standing in her doorway. "When did you get back?" she asked.

"About twenty minutes ago. You didn't feel me?"

"Been preoccupied," Jean said, returning attention to the papers. "These are Doug's preliminary analyses for some PCRs we already had prepped. Hank's still working on Emma's. Logan gave a biopsy, too. Hank said the incision kept trying to close even as he was working."

She heard Scott move into the room, stepping carefully over piles to squat beside her. "You're still avoiding him, aren't you?"

But Jean didn't want to discuss Logan with Scott. "How's War?" she asked instead.

Scott was silent a minute, and she could feel both his irritation and his fear pulsing over their link. She wanted to tell him he didn't have anything to be afraid of, but she knew he'd just retort that if so, she'd have talked to Logan by now. "Cranky and coughing," he said finally, submitting to the subject change. "And finalizing his damn will. He pisses me off."

Jean didn't reply, though she understood Warren's actions better than Scott. Scott had survived hell for years in his youth by dint of pure, unadulterated stubbornness. He refused to lose, and if he feared he might, he'd cheerfully cheat to change the odds. But that meant he had a hard time facing the inevitable. Sometimes she loved him for it, but at other times, it frustrated her.

"He told me he wasn't dying yet," Scott went on, "and sent me home to see how you were."

Jean's smile was watery. "Working overtime."

"Have you slept?"

"I don't have time to sleep."

"Jean - "

"I can go without sleep for a while, and I don't have time for it right now." She changed the subject again. "The professor's arranging for War's transfer. Hank and I will go into the city tomorrow morning to pick him up and bring him back here. We'll have to look official, so I may need you to come along to fly the helicopter."

"Since when did we get a chopper?"

"We're borrowing Ken Worthington's. He's having the sides repainted today to look like clinic transport. He and Kathryn will be coming out to stay here until -" She stopped and choked, and Scott reached out to squeeze her arm.

"War won't be thrilled to have his parents hanging around."

"They're his _parents_ ."

"Funny, they never acted like it."

"Scott -"

He rose to stalk around her office like a caged tiger. "Speaking of parents, has anyone called the Drakes and Rasputins?"

"Piotr's parents are driving in tonight; his mother will stay here but his father will have to drive back and forth to his parish. As for the Drakes . . . Bobby refused to let the professor call them. His argument is that he doesn't have the early-type X-gene. He'll probably recover."

"His parents should still know."

"You try telling him that. He says if they're told, they'll know he's a mutant. He can't let go of what happened last year, Scott."

Scott was quiet a minute, then came back over to where she knelt and squatted beside her, careful not to step on her papers. "Listen, if I'm going to be coming along with you tomorrow and need to look inconspicuous, maybe it's time to lose the glasses."

That took a moment to penetrate, then Jean turned her head to stare. "Scott, you don't have to go through with the brain surgery just for tomorrow; pilots wear sunglasses all the time -"

"It's not about that." He frowned down at his knees. "I've been thinking since Saturday." He looked up again and the overhead lights flashed off ruby quartz. "I'm ready to try."

Reaching out, she pulled his glasses off so she could see his eyes. He looked back at her steadily. "All right," she said. "It shouldn't be very difficult - shouldn't even take very long."

"Then let's do it." And he stood, offering her a hand for leverage. She stood, too, and led him out into the main medbay where Hank and Doug were working together over Sun stations. Both looked around, then did a double-take to see Scott without the glasses. "Don't worry; I'm holding back the beams. Hank, could I have your assistance for twenty minutes?" Hank just nodded.

Scott had crossed to one of the exam beds, hopping up on it. He seemed very calm, and she touched his mind to find out if it were a ruse, but it wasn't. Scott trusted rarely, and only after a long battle. Yet when he'd made his decision, he _trusted_ . It almost made her cry.

But she had an operation to perform. She might be using TK to do it, but it was still an operation and she and Hank hooked up monitors to track Scott's vitals. With no incisions, they didn't need to worry about anesthesia, scrubbing down, or taking him to the operating room, but she wasn't going to treat this casually. This was Scott's _brain_ . It's wasn't a little thing they were doing.

As they prepped, she explained the TK procedure to Hank, who nodded along. She thought he seemed grateful to be doing something. Maybe this wouldn't save anyone from Legacy, but they were healers, and today, _someone_ would be healed.

Doug Ramsey was still sitting in a chair at the computers. "Should I go?" he asked, tone somewhere between curiosity and caution.

"You don't have to," Jean answered. "There won't even be any blood, if you're squeamish. But there is something you can do, if you would? Go out to the uniform closets in the hallway and fetch Scott's visor."

Nodding, Doug rose and headed out.

Everything was ready**:** Scott lay on his back, (unvisored) eyes on the ceiling, monitors beeping. Hank stood nearby if she needed him. "All right," she said to Scott. "First, I'm going to put you out, then I'll remove the scar tissue. When I'm done, we'll have you visored, just in case."

He nodded once, shortly, and shut his eyes as she laid a hand on his forehead, slipping into his mind to trigger natural endorphins along with the reticular activating system in his brainstem, putting him to sleep. Then she focused her attention on the scar tissue at the rear of his brain. The tissue wasn't affecting the primary visual cortex, or V1, but was located near the parietal visual cortical areas, which dealt with spacial imaging. In Scott, this portion was expanded to compliment and control his mutation. It was simple for her to atomize the partially obstructing scar tissue and resuscitate the somewhat atrophied brain tissue beneath, expanding the squeezed capillaries to allow blood - and oxygen - to reach that area once again.

Satisfied that everything was now functioning as nature had intended, she slipped free and opened her eyes. Hank was still watching the monitors. "How long?" she asked.

He whipped his head around. "What? You're done? You just shut your eyes -"

They stared at each other.

She'd performed, in seconds, an operation that, had she tried to do it manually, would have taken hours, and may not have been successful.

Doug hadn't had time to return, so they sat silently until footsteps announced his arrival, carrying one of Scott's visors. "Were you waiting on me?" he asked, looking from one to the other.

"No, we're done," Jean said. She held out a hand and Doug passed her the visor. This, she settled on Scott's face, then reached into his mind to re-stimulate the RAS in his brainstem, and he woke with a start.

"Everything go okay?"

"Yes, it went fine."

"How long was I out?"

Jean hesitated, glancing at Hank. "Not long. I told you it wouldn't take long. Are your eyes open?"

"Yes." Before she could ask, he added, "And I can't feel any beams." He sat up and very slowly, with his face towards the medbay floor, removed the visor.

Nothing happened. Raising his chin, he looked around. "Wow," was all he said. Jean, Hank, and Doug were silent. Jean knew she was tearing up, and put a hand over her mouth.

"Go show Charles," Hank said after a moment. "Jean, why don't you go with him? I think the professor could do with some good news today."

* * *

Indeed, some good news was in order as, by Wednesday night, three more students were admitted to the medbay with Legacy symptoms, along with Ororo, who showed up coughing badly, escorted by a very anxious Kurt Wagner.

At the time, Hank was taking a nap and Doug was still working on his research, so Jean helped Ororo get situated in the extra exam room that Mystique had recently vacated, being over the worst of her symptoms. In light of impending needs, she'd been discharged to a private room on the third floor, with a promise that she'd stay put. Jean had, apparently, accepted the promise. Now, she telekinetically changed the sheets and prepped the room while Ororo waited in a chair. "How are you feeling?" Jean asked.

"Not too badly. But Kurt insisted -"

"Kurt's right. The number one key to beating this thing is keeping infected patients pumped with sufficient fluids and electrolytes." Abruptly, she leaned forward to grip Ro's hands. "You're on the winning side of this equation, Ro, and I know you're as stubborn as Scott. Don't let me down. We _need_ you to get well."

"I shall do my best," Ororo replied, squeezing back. It was, she thought, one of the more intimate exchanges they'd had in the almost eleven years of their acquaintance.

Scott came by later, to check on her. She started when she saw his blank face, though she'd heard the news. It had been all over the mansion inside ten minutes and the den had filled with curious students, come to see an unmasked Cyclops. But knowing how little she'd want to be the object of either gossip or curiosity, she'd let him be. Now, he said nothing, just met her eyes. _Met her eyes. _ She nodded faintly to him, and he nodded back, then disappeared, leaving her smiling.

Half an hour later, her last visitor of the day came calling - Doug Ramsey. Almost against her will, she worried whether her hair was too greasy and her face too flushed. But he grinned and came to sit in a chair at a judicious distance from her bed. He was wearing scrubs and gloves, as well as a cap and face mask. "Hey," he said.

"Hello," she replied. "I heard the good news - you are not infected."

"Luck of the draw. How are you feeling?"

"Sore. Stuffed up. Jean gave me some medicine for that. I saw you working at the computers. What are you doing?"

"Trying to find commonalities between antibody reactions in infected mutants, then I'll be comparing them to Emma Frost's when Hank's PCRs are ready."

"Are you having any luck so far?"

"Maybe a little; I'll know more when I can see Emma's results, and Logan's." He frowned then. "But it's not fast enough."

She knew what he meant, and turned her eyes down to her brown hands on the white sheets. "We all do what we can, Doug."

He snorted, softly. "Tell that to the infected kids with an early X-gene."

"None of that is _your_ fault."

"How do you stay so calm? And I don't mean that as an insult - I envy your equanimity."

She felt herself blushing. "I am calm because I must be. If I am not careful, the weather mirrors my emotions." She looked up at him. "My 'equanimity' is a necessity."

Now he was blushing, made much more visible with his fair skin. "I'm sorry - I didn't realize."

"It is all right. Most do not realize." An awkward silence descended. "Thank you, for coming to visit," she said finally.

"No problem. I promised Kurt I'd check on you."

And she felt . . . sideswiped. He hadn't come for himself? She'd hoped he might have come because he was concerned for her. "Kurt?" A pause while she swallowed. "He has been a dear friend, these last months."

Doug tilted his head and studied her. He didn't speak immediately, then said, "I may be sticking in my nose where it's not welcome, but - Ororo, he feels a little more than friendship."

Her face froze and she blinked several times. Kurt? More than friendship? What was Doug implying? "Did he, ah - did he tell you that?"

"He didn't need to." Abruptly, Doug stood; he appeared nervous. "I'm probably way out of line here. I just - I thought you knew. His body language - yours . . . I, uh, read body language, too. It's patterns, like anything else." He was looking everywhere but at her. "I'm sorry. I'm - I'll go now. Sleep well." And he disappeared out the door before she could gather her wits enough to ask anything else.

Kurt felt more for her than friendship? And if true, how could she have been so blind that it took a virtual stranger to alert her to it? As for her own feelings . . . Doug had obviously thought she might return whatever Kurt felt, and it was true she'd always been . . . _comfortable_ with Kurt. But she'd never considered it more. He didn't make her blood race in quite the way that Doug Ramsey did.

Pulling up the top sheet and blanket (the sub-basement was cold), she slid down in the bed and pondered her conflicted feelings about Kurt Wagner and Doug Ramsey.

* * *

Warren had spent a horrid night, his cough transforming into a lung-searing hack and his fever spiking, his muscles hurting so badly he could find no comfortable way to lay. When he finally did dose off (helped by drugs) he suffered strange dreams and woke before sunrise, his sheets soaked from sweat, still coughing hard enough to rattle his entire bed. A little blood came with the phlegm.

The nurses arrived before seven to prepare him for his transfer. He wasn't sure if they were more relieved to be rid of a plague patient or more offended that he'd chosen private care over "The Country Club," as Cornell Medical was sometimes called. He doubted they realized he was leaving to die. News of the link between survival and second-generation X-genes had not been publicly released. It was better to let every mutant assume that catching the disease could be fatal - and take proper precautions.

He was glad finally to hear Hank's booming baritone in the hall beyond, assuring the doctors that the private clinic in question met containment specifications. The Cornell staff felt caught between the rock of the New York Department of Health's safety concerns, and the hard place of maintaining their reputation for protecting the privacy of the wealthy. Having a CDC specialist there to affirm the clinic was safe no doubt made it easier for Warren's chief doctor to sign his release and hand his chart to Jean.

She and Hank entered the room with some orderlies. Had Warren not known she was coming, he'd never have guessed who she was - or even that it was a she, since 'Jean' was decided male and balding at the moment. It was disconcerting, but fortunately, she'd prepped him on the plans last night via Cerebro. "Dr. Schaef, it's good to see you," he said as they were shifting him from the bed onto a gurney - the wings made a wheelchair impossible and hospital regulation didn't permit him to walk out.

When they reached the chopper on the roof landing pad, Warren was relieved to spot not a single reporter. "Where'd you stash the media?" he called over the noise of the wind and blades.

"They're expecting you to leave by ambulance," Hank replied. "And so, are downstairs."

"Smart," Warren replied as Hank and Jean lifted him from the hospital gurney into the chopper, with a little unnoticed TK assistance from Jean. Wind buffeted all of them and Warren wasn't sure if it were louder inside or outside the chopper. Scott occupied the pilot seat with the young girl, Rogue, as co-pilot. She must be learning to fly everything Scott could, which surprised him a bit. Scott hadn't taken on a flight student since Ororo (and Jean), and as far as Warren knew, neither Jean nor Ro had been taught everything. But the real surprise wasn't the girl. It was seeing Scott in sunglasses.

_Real_ sunglasses. With dark lenses. Warren tried to shout a question over the noise, but only wound up coughing. Jean put a (disturbingly male) hand over his mouth. _Don't try to talk_ , she sent_. _ _And yes, I fixed Scott's eyes_ .

_Permanently?_

_Permanently._

Twisting in his seat to be sure they were all strapped in, Scott gave a thumbs-up, which Jean returned. Then he revved the chopper engines and took them into the sky. Warren wondered if this would be the last time he'd fly, and tried to sit up enough to look out a window. Jean - now herself again - offered support. It galled him to be stuck inside, not out in the free air, but at least he was rid of the hospital. He knew that as soon as he arrived in Westchester, he'd be taken down to the mansion medbay where he'd have even less privacy than at Cornell - but he was going _home_ , and for now, that was enough.

* * *

Thursday morning, Kitty was answering email on her laptop in the den - and shooting furtive glances at the new teacher, Dr. Ramsey, who was working on his own laptop - when the den intercom blared to life. "Hello? Is anyone there?"

Kitty started, as did Dr. Ramsey and the handful of other students in the room. The intercom was there because Professor Xavier and the teachers weren't always in their offices to answer the gate callbox. Now, Kitty and Dr. Ramsey rose at the same time, but Kitty reached the 'com first. "This is Xavier's School for Gifted Youngters. How may we help you?"

"Um - can I get in the gate?"

Kitty blinked in surprise and Dr. Ramsey reached over her shoulder to speak into the mic. "Can I ask your business?"

A pause, then, "I'm looking for Scott Summers. He does work there, doesn't he?"

"Yes, he does. Mr. Summers is currently with a student" - well, if one counted really old students, as Mr. Summers had gone into the city with Drs. McCoy and Grey to pick up Mr. Worthington. "Can I tell him who's calling?"

"This is his brother, Alex."

All the students looked up at that, though Dr. Ramsey didn't appear surprised (probably didn't know enough to _be_ surprised). "He didn't give you gate codes?"

"He didn't know I was coming. I got email from him yesterday, and . . . well, I had to drive up."

Kitty was trying to wrap her mind around Mr. Summers having a brother as she watched Dr. Ramsey consider this. "I'll buzz you in and meet you on the main drive, Mr. Summers."

"Blanding," said the person on the other side. "It's Blanding, actually, by adoption. Alex Blanding."

Dr. Ramsey blinked. "All right, Mr. Blanding. I'm Doug Ramsey. I'll see you shortly." Face sketched with faint misgivings, Doug hit the gate access and glanced at Kitty. "Adoption?"

"Mr. Summers was an orphan," Kitty replied. In fact, the mention of adoption had made her less dubious. "I didn't even know he _had_ a brother."

Still looking at Kitty, Doug said, "Sam, would you mind accompanying me?"

"Sure thing," Sam Guthrie said, standing. Of the kids in the room, Kitty supposed him the most offensively powerful. Dr. Ramsey might be polite, but he wasn't stupid.

"Kitty, please inform the professor of our visitor."

Despite her curiosity about Mr. Summers' brother, she could hardly refuse a direct request from a teacher - especially the handsome new one who navigated computers even better than she did. (But wasn't that thought disloyal to Pete, especially now?) "Yes, sir." And she darted off right through the door without bothering to open it.

Kitty found Professor Xavier talking to Father and Mrs. Rasputin in the dining hall. She felt badly at butting in, but thought this worth the disturbance, so she sidled up to the professor. He glanced at her and must have read the cause for her appearance right from her mind, as he turned back to the Rasputins. "I must beg your forgiveness. An urgent matter requires my attention. Feel free to go back downstairs and I will rejoin you as soon as I may."

"Of course," Father Rasputin said as the professor took his leave and motored away. Kitty, however, stood frozen.

She'd met the Rasputins at graduation earlier in the year. They'd been polite, even sweet to her, but she'd felt self-conscious. Now, his mother had clearly been crying, and Father Rasputin had clearly been trying not to. They looked up at Kitty. "You're Piotr's friend, yes?" Pete's father asked. He had a thick accent, but his English was good. "You know his condition?"

Kitty nodded once, then abruptly burst into tears. She couldn't help it. Mrs. Rasputin did, too, and rose to pull Kitty into a warm hug. For that moment, it didn't matter that Kitty was a nice Jewish girl and Mrs. Rasputin the wife of an Orthodox priest. Grief united them.

* * *

Logan had been hanging about outside the dining hall, unwilling to intrude but feeling at loose ends. Kids were gonna die, and whatever Hank and The Cue Ball had said about using his own antibodies to buck up their immune systems, he still felt useless. He could save Marie, but that was all he knew for sure. And Logan preferred results, not theories.

Situated as he was, he heard Ramsey come in the main entry with a guy who had a strange voice but familiar scent even as Xavier motored out of the dining room. Spotting Logan, Xavier halted, eyebrows raised. "Not eavesdroppin'," Logan said. "Just -"

"I understand," Xavier said. "Come. I believe Kitty can escort Piotr's parents."

So Logan followed. Ramsey and the elder Guthrie boy were there in the main hall with a blond kid. "Professor - " Ramsey began, but Xavier interrupted him to say, "Alex Blanding, I'm most pleased to make your acquaintance. Scott is currently detained, but I'm sure he'll be delighted to see you as soon as he's available."

Alex Blanding - whoever the hell he was - didn't seem pacified. "Where _is_ Scott?"

"Off the grounds actually. He should be returning soon." Xavier glanced at Alex's bags. "May I show you to a room where you can relax until your brother is home?"

_Brother? _ This Alex Blanding was Summers' _brother_ ? Yet now that Xavier had said so, Logan could both see - and smell - the resemblance.

"Okay," Alex was saying. "That'd be . . . okay, I guess." He seemed a bit at a loss, but picked up his hiking backpack and followed Xavier towards the elevator.

* * *

"So she thinks Shaw infected me at breakfast?"

"So she said." Jean was talking to an exhausted Warren as she settled him into the private room beside Ororo's. Bobby and Piotr were in exam rooms across the hall, and Jubilee was now in the surgery bay with the three new girls who'd fallen ill last night, including Terry Roark.

Scott, who'd been hovering in the doorway with arms crossed like a grumpy guard, shut the door and came inside. "I don't understand what the point was. It's not like Shaw's going to inherit anything."

Warren's smile was faint, and Jean could mentally overhear his exasperated amusement at Scott's naivete. His voice was breathy when he spoke, and the sound of that beloved bass grown so weak broke Jean's heart. "Shaw had no idea how this would affect me; his goal was to make my 'condition' as a mutant publicly known. If I recovered, I'd have no chance of election as White King, and the public scandal over the fact I'm a mutant would damage Worthington stocks. If I died, well, the business would then be in the hands of my father - and we all know how good _he_ is at business management. That's a win-win for Shaw."

"Whatever Shaw knew or didn't know," Jean said, starting an IV, "Nathaniel Essex has a copy of our genetic databank. He admitted as much to me on Monday. Shaw may not have known what DNA type you have, War, but _Essex_ did." She bit her lip as she removed a vial from her coat pocket - it contained concentrated serum from Emma - and fit a syringe with it, injecting it directly into Warren's saline drip. Hank didn't know she'd taken it; they hadn't decided yet who would win the serum lottery, and Jean knew this was wrong, even as she absolutely knew she had to do it. She justified it by telling herself that the X-Men couldn't lose Warren's assets, and Scott couldn't lose Warren, but those were just excuses. Truth was, _she_ couldn't lose Warren. Setting the drip to high, she turned. It was done now, and couldn't be undone. "Essex knew he was killing you when he infected you with it." _And I'm going to save you,_ she added to herself.

"I don't get the impression Essex gives a damn who lives or dies," Warren replied. "And what do you mean he _admitted_ to you on Monday that he had the database? You saw him? Scott, you ass - you let her go _see_ him?"

"She didn't tell me she was going until she was back." Scott had turned away to stare up at the blank TV. "I'm going to kill that son of a bitch," he added. It sounded almost casual, but without his glasses, Jean could see his whole expression and the look in his eyes scared her. She didn't think he'd regret killing Essex any more than she regretted the empty vial in her pocket.

"What is he turning us into?" she whispered, mostly to herself.

Before anyone could reply, there was a knock on the door and Scott, who was closest, opened it. The professor sat on the other side. "Scott, your brother is here."

"Brother?" Warren said from the bed, trying to sit up further.

Scott looked completely taken aback. "Alex came?"

"He drove up from Virginia this morning, apparently in response to an email you sent last night?"

Scott rubbed his forehead and glanced back at both Jean and Warren. "I, um - Okay, I'd better go see him then. I'll talk to you both later." And he headed out as Xavier motored in.

Warren glanced from the professor to Jean. "What - exactly - have I missed?"

So Jean sat down and, aided by Xavier, told him about taking Scott to Virginia last weekend to see Alex for the first time in over twenty years, and about her bizarre meeting with Essex on Monday. Warren lay silent through most of it, asking only a few question. She wasn't sure which bit of news disturbed him more - the gall of Essex's demands, or that Scott's blood brother had turned up. When she was finished, she stood and laid a hand over his. "Don't worry. Some families we're born with, some we choose. Scott chose you a long time ago; nothing will change that." She squeezed. "Now, I'd better go see if Hank has finished Emma's PCRs." Kissing his brow, she headed out.

* * *

Xavier didn't say anything for a moment after Jean left; he and Warren just looked at each other. "Shall I go?" Xavier asked finally. "You look very tired."

"I am, and achy, too - but whatever Jean said, I'm worried more." Xavier didn't reply, just nodded for Warren to continue. Shifting a bit, Warren said, "Jean found Alex via Cerebro?" Xavier nodded again. "Couldn't you have done that? Scott's been hoping for years that he'd turn up."

"I did find him," the professor admitted, "some time back. But Alexander Blanding-cum-Summers was not in immediate danger from his mutation, and was also not interested in locating Scott. It would have been unethical for me to force Scott upon him just because I could."

"What changed between then and now?"

"Nothing."

Warren blinked. "Then why did Jean -?"

"Jean took Scott to meet Alex despite my specific prohibition. It was . . . very nearly a disaster. Fortunately, Alex is involved with a very sensible young lady who convinced him to talk to his brother after all. She is, in fact, part of the reason I've bid my time with Alex. Between her interest in her own birth family and a few . . . subtle mental suggestions I placed in Alex's mind, he was moving towards rediscovering his past - and his brother. But he wasn't there _yet_ . I hope this premature reunion does not end poorly."

Warren stared at the empty wall opposite. Scott had his brother back - his real brother - and Warren should be glad he'd have someone there when Warren wasn't around anymore. Rubbing right between his brows, he looked up at Xavier. "That's good news then, if it works out. Jean can be a bull in a china shop when she's after something."

Xavier wasn't buying his platitudes. "It's perfectly normal to feel jealousy, Warren, but Jean is quite correct in one thing. Scott chose you years ago, and finding Alex won't alter that."

"I'm _dying_, Charles. In less than a week, I won't matter."

"You will always _matter_, Warren, regardless of whether you're alive or dead. Never think otherwise, even for a moment."

Warren laid his head back against the pillow. "What's going to happen, when Scott's left alone to help Jean find her way? Charles, she _is_ a bull in a china shop, and we - all of us - are the china. She means well, but . . . ."

"I have faith in her _heart_. As you said, she _means_ well, and our intentions are no small thing. A teacher, or parent, does his best, and hopes that his children are prepared when the testing comes. Jean may no longer be anything that you or I recognize as mortal, but she is still _human_."

* * *

Artie had been haunting the main hall near the elevator next to Xavier's office. People came and went to the sub-basement - and the medbay - but they were in a hurry and didn't look as if they had time to answer his questions. He was about to give up when the doors opened again and Mr. Summers emerged, then paused there in the hall, staring down at the floor with hands on hips and lips pursed. It was his "thinking hard about what punishment to give out" expression - or so the students had dubbed it. But now, without his glasses, he didn't look so impassive or tough. To Artie, he just looked troubled. He also didn't seem to be in a hurry, so Artie approached. Glancing up, Mr. Summers gave him a weak smile. "How are you feeling?"

These days, that was never a neutral question. Artie shrugged and sent a mental image of peaches.

"Peachy-keen, huh?" Mr. Summers asked and Artie nodded. "I don't think you're hanging around the main stairs because you're feeling peachy. What's up?"

Artie sent a flurry of images of Terry, who'd been taken down to the medbay yesterday evening**:** a healthy Terry, a Terry coughing, and then his own mental fears of Terry dying. Mr. Summers seemed to get it, because he set a hand on Artie's shoulder. "I haven't seen her, didn't even know she was down there." He paused, then said, "I haven't seen any of them, in fact. That's just - it's not right." Artie didn't think Mr. Summers was really talking to him, but then Mr. Summers focused on Artie again. (And that was _so_ going to take getting used to, being able to see Mr. Summer's eyes.) "I tell you what, if you can wait half an hour, I'll take you down there and you can visit Terry. And so can I. I need to visit everybody."

Artie perked up at that, mouthing, 'Really?'

"Really - as long as you follow Dr. Grey or Dr. McCoy's safety directions, you can go in to see her for a few minutes. But I have someone else I have to visit first."

Artie made an "okay" sign with his hand and dashed off for the den. He could kill half an hour there easy, and true to his word, in about thirty minutes, Mr. Summers was back, standing in the den doorway. He was carrying a yellow stuffed bear. Artie pointed to it and raised his eyebrows.

"It's Jubilee's. I gave it to her a long time ago, when she first arrived here. She was younger then than you are now. She'd never had a teddy-bear." He held it up. "She'd had about every other stuffed animal, but not a teddy bear. I told her that was just criminal, and got her one."

Artie laughed silently and sent pictures of bananas. "Yes, yellow," Mr. Summers agreed as they headed for the elevator. "It's Jubilee."

Turning the corner to reach the elevator, they both halted cold. Professor Xavier was exiting the lift, his handkerchief out. He was coughing into it.

The kerchief was spotted with red.

"Professor - " Mr. Summers said softly and Xavier's bald head whipped around. "Tell me you tested negative?" But the professor just smiled slightly, and shook his head.

Artie felt like Chicken Little. The sky was falling.

* * *

**Notes:** Just for the record, in the comic, Doug Ramsey was a childhood friend of Kitty Pryde, but I'm not following that history for him, since I'm presenting him as older.


	35. Personal Journal: Servitude

_**From Scott Summers' Personal Journal:**_

Very few people know who and what I was before I became Cyclops. And only three of them have loved me without reservation and without judgment.

Two of those three are dying, and there's not a damn thing I can do to stop it. I tell myself I still have Jean - impossibly, I have Jean - but there are days I wonder who 'Jean' is now? I have Alex, too, but he's a virtual stranger. Everything I feel for him is about nostalgia. I don't know the guy upstairs on my third floor. What if we hate each other? Or worse, what if we find we have nothing in common but some genes and a nightmare memory?

I was alone once, completely alone in the world. It's hard to explain what that's like to someone who hasn't been there. I couldn't bear it a second time. That's not melodrama; it's simple truth. I still have, buried away, the smack I bought - God, years ago now - when I thought I might come down with AIDS. An overdose of heroine together with alcohol is a pretty effective suicide. I'm not inclined to blow out my brains, and not because I fear the pain. No, someone would have to clean up the mess, and I wouldn't leave that for anybody. But enough drugs and some Jack, taken right before bed, and I'd die neatly in my sleep. No muss, no fuss. The trick would be fooling Jean.

It's a strange comfort, to know I have the option. I'm sitting here, holding the bag of white powder in my hand. But I won't take that path. If I did, I'd let down all Xavier's expectations for me, let down the school - the kids. I promised the professor that if anything happened to him, I'd take care of them. I can't do that if I'm dead. I also promised Jean I'd stand by her. I keep my promises.

So I'm not free to die. It might be easier if I were. I can't take this. I thought losing Jean was hard, and it was. But now, I'm losing my father, my brother, and some of my children.

It just . . . it hurts like hell. And the _anticipation_ of it leaves me walking around in a fog, dim and drunk on the enormity of what's looming.

They're _dying_.

They're dying and I can't stop it. And the feeling I hate most in all the world is being helpless.


	36. Phoenix Rising

"How long have you been sick?" Jean demanded as she levitated the professor out of his wheelchair onto an exam bed so that Hank could help him into the pajamas Scott had fetched. Scott was hovering now, radiating anxiety and distracting her. Before the professor could answer, Jean turned to him, saying, "Please go help Edna transfer Bobby to one of the prepped beds in the diagnostics room. We had two boys come in this afternoon, so he'll have company."

"Jean, there is no need -"

"Charles - shut up." She was so angry, she was shaking. Scott hesitated, then hurried off as Jean prepared an IV. "You should have come down here as soon as you knew; we could have -"

"You could have made me comfortable. That is all."

"But you've been with students -"

"They have not been allowed in my office since Tuesday. You have been too preoccupied to notice. And I have not had dinner with Erik, either. I simply hope that I did not inadvertently infect him before realizing I was infected."

"You've known since Tuesday?" Jean snapped, glaring at Hank, too.

"I told Hank he was not to inform you, or Scott, until I gave my consent."

"Lovely. Thank you, Charles, for treating us like children!"

Xavier smiled and reached up to grip her arm. "You are," he said softly. "You are my children."

She was touched, but wasn't going to let that deflect her anger. "We're grown ups."

"I know." Xavier coughed. "But parents prefer to protect their children, when they may. You are angry now mostly because there is nothing you can do."

"I'm _angry_ because you didn't show me the courtesy of telling me the truth sooner." Jean raised her eyes to Hank, who was being conveniently quiet. "You, too," she said. "Don't think you're off the hook just because he told you not to tell me."

Still with that annoying smile, the professor settled back with Hank's help. "Jean, what's done is done. Go talk to Scott. He needs you."

She stalked off. Scott had, indeed, cleared Bobby out of an exam room, and was now trying to change the sheets despite the fact he was sobbing almost too hard to see. With the beams under control, he _could_ cry again with his eyes open, and she found him yanking futilely at white sheets while swearing, his face wet. She pulled him to her and let him cry against her neck. She was crying, too, and they clung hard.

After a few minutes, he pulled away, embarrassed and wiping his eyes. They looked even bluer against the redness. Then together, they made up the bed. She could have done it herself in a matter of moments, but it seemed important for them to do this together. When they were done, she headed for the door, but he grabbed her wrist, pulling her back to press his forehead to hers. Her hands were gripped in his between them. He seemed to be struggling for something to say, finally settled on, "I love you."

She raised her chin enough to kiss him. "I know. And ditto."

She went outside then for a little while. She needed the air, and the privacy to do her own crying where she didn't have to be strong - for Scott, for Xavier, for the students, for Warren. Hank found her sitting on a bench. "I'm still mad at you," she told him as he sat down beside her.

"I know," he replied. "I could say I was just following orders, but that's only partly true. I wanted to protect you, too." He had his hands folded in his lap, and was clearly trying to think of the best words. "I'm sorry. But the professor's right about one thing - you're mad because there's nothing you can do. Nothing I can do, either. That's always the problem for people like us, isn't it? We have all this knowledge - as doctors, researchers . . . and we still can't save them."

He looked down at his hands, moving his thumbs up and down compulsively. She thought he might be talking more about himself than her. She'd always been the smart girl, growing up, but for Hank, his genius had defined him. "I don't have any words of wisdom," he went on finally.

Reaching out, she covered his hands with one of hers. "You don't need any. Just sit with me a while. I think we could both use a minute out of there."

So they sat.

* * *

At the knock on the door of his little private room Friday morning, Warren glanced up to find Ororo and Kurt, Ororo dragging an IV pole to match Warren's. "I heard you were stuck down here, too," he said, waving them both in. Kurt helped Ro settle comfortably into a chair; she smiled back, dazzling, and Kurt ducked his head shyly. Warren wondered if Ro would ever figure out what was right under her nose. She deserved a good man, but as long as he'd known her, she'd been . . . distant. Of course, given what he knew of her life before she'd come to America, he couldn't say he blamed her, and Scott was, predictably perhaps, her closest friend at the mansion - which wasn't saying much. He hoped Kurt could break through the walls. Both Scott and Ro would trust someone with their lives before their hearts.

She turned to him, then. "Jean has allowed me to visit, as I am not yet confined to bed rest." She bent forward, studying his face. "How are you?" Kurt had perched himself on the foot of Warren's bed, odd feet gripping the steel bars. He appeared equally concerned.

"I'm feeling better - better than yesterday, anyway. Yesterday, I figured I was circling the drain, but today, I'm not coughing as much, or as achy."

Relieved, Ororo smiled and reached over to grip his hand on the sheets. "I am _glad_, Warren. Did you hear about the professor?"

"Scott told me last night." Warren sighed and rubbed his eyes. "Damn fool. Jean said he pumped himself full of Advil and Tylenol to hide his symptoms and kept going as long as he could. How are the students taking the news?"

"They are understandably upset. The professor has been their anchor." She frowned and seemed to be struggling with how to say the rest. "As much as they admire Scott, and Jean - and me - we are not Charles Xavier. We shall all be adrift."

"_Nein_," Kurt protested softly even as Warren said, "You're all three stronger than you know. The professor didn't pick you for no reason."

Ororo ignored that. "In any case," she said, "Scott is upstairs, attempting to organize documents and talk to any children who are upset after last night's news. Jean and Hank are completing the tests on Emma's biopsy."

"How are the rest of the kids down here - especially Piotr?"

She shook her head. "Both Piotr and Bobby appear to be worsening, and Jubilee isn't far behind. Rogue began coughing last night, and Logan healed her, then sent her up to the third floor."

"I'm glad for Rogue, at least. She's a good kid; Scott thinks she has real promise."

Despite her obvious upset, Ro snorted. "Scott has found someone who is as plane drunk as he is, and knows what to do with a wrench. I perform plane maintenance because it is necessary. She performs it because she likes to. I cannot say if that is part of her own personality, or something she gained after absorbing Logan."

"Or Erik," Warren added. "Erik built this sub-basement, before he left Charles."

Ro's lips thinned. "Or Erik," she conceded.

"Speaking of which, has anyone told Erik about the professor?" Warren asked. "He may be Magneto, but he and Charles -"

"Scott has agreed to tell him."

Warren rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "Heaven help us."

* * *

"You wanted - no, you _demanded_ to see me?" Erik asked, standing in the door to Charles' office, hands behind his back. At his elbow, Mystique pursed her lips to keep from laughing at his tone.

Summers put down his pen and leaned back in the chair behind Xavier's desk. She'd heard that Jean Grey had done something to heal his eyes, but this was the first time she'd seen him without the glasses. He'd always been pretty in that way she didn't like in men, all smooth skin and fine features and full mouth. Insipid. The eyes, though, she hadn't expected; they undercut the effect - calculating and cold, and as impassive as the red quartz had been before. He looked tired, too, and clearly hadn't shaved that morning. "Have a seat," he said, gesturing.

Erik complied, poising himself on the edge of the leather chair in front of the desk. Mystique stood at his back and Summers fixed his attention on her instead of Erik. "In this house, Raven, please show some consideration for the age of the occupants and cover yourself like a normal human being. Convenient scales or not, I don't want you running around here nude."

Furious at his cheek, she opened her mouth to retort but Erik raised a hand. "_Mystique_" - Erik laid emphasis on her chosen name - "prefers to be seen as her natural self."

"I didn't ask her to morph. I asked her to put clothes on. Real clothes. A grown woman walking around in the buff is a distraction to teenage boys." He glanced back up at Mystique and his eyes showed no more feeling than they had before - no typical male reaction to her either. He may as well have been made of ice. "It's called 'flashing.'"

She broke out laughing. "You are . . . unbelievable. The prostitute turned prude. For your information, I'm sure every teenaged boy in this house has either accessed a porn site or looked through a girlie magazine. Get your head out of the 1950s, Cyclops."

"The _ex-_prostitute" - he stressed it - "knows all about sexual manipulation, so don't pretend I'm unaware of the many layers to your choices." He still appeared perfectly relaxed and she hated him for it . . . hated Erik, too, for not intervening. "First, without clothing, you can conveniently morph into anyone at any moment without needing to hide the evidence. Second, being nude constantly throws off others and gives you an edge. I have no doubt the kids check porn sites, but it's one thing to see nudity when prepared and curious. It's quite another to have a naked woman walk past in the hallway when you're sixteen and standing next to the girl you have a crush on, and you've suddenly got an embarrassing hard-on. You may find that funny, but I find it cruel." Now, for the first time, he stood, slamming both palms on the desk. "They're _kids, _you sick fuck. Why don't you try seeing to it that their lives aren't _quite_ as shitty as ours were?"

Absolute rage warred with an infuriating humiliation in her belly - and an even more infuriating admiration for his strategic awareness of why she wore no clothing. It took her half a minute to control herself enough to reply. Erik still sat silently, watching Summers. "What an arrogant prick," she said at last. "_Don't_ presume to judge me, or imply that I don't care about the children."

"Then show it by respecting their innocence. At least some of them do still have a little. Put some clothes on."

She held his eyes, which changed not at all as she morphed clothes onto her form. "Will this do?"

"Until you can get real clothes from your room, yes." He sat down again.

Erik suddenly began to clap, slowly, but it was a genuine expression of appreciation, and it pissed off Mystique even more. "The cub has finally shown that he has claws."

"The cub always had them, Erik, I just keep them sheathed most of the time because it's what one does in polite company."

"You called me 'Erik.' I'm touched, Scott. Now, I presume you summoned us down here for some reason besides ordering my protégée to cover herself?"

"Yes." Summers' jaw tensed. "Last night, Charles Xavier was taken down to the medbay." He hesitated a moment, perhaps as much for himself as out of courtesy to Erik. "He has Legacy." Another minute pause. "I thought you'd want to know."

"I _want _to see him." And there was no humor at all now in Erik's tone.

Summers punched a button on the phone sitting on the desk and spoke into the intercom. "Hank, you there? Magneto would like to visit the professor. Is it a good time?"

_As good as any,_ came the voice on the other end.

"I'll bring him down in a minute then."

But Mystique wasn't watching Summers. She was watching Erik, who gripped both chair arms. She set a hand on his shoulder, squeezing once. She hurt for him, but she also resented the fact that, even after so long, the news his old friend - his old enemy - had a terminal illness could leave him so shaken. Then another thought occurred to her. "They've been eating together in Xavier's room," she said. "Could Xavier have given Erik the virus after all?"

"I don't know. Jean will take a blood sample and run another test while he's down there."

She looked up finally. Summers wasn't even watching them, but working on papers. He looked . . . bored. "You don't even _care_?"

"I care about a number of things, Raven," he replied without looking up. "Right now, I care about paying the bills so the power company doesn't shut off our electricity." He looked up. "You can go back to your room. I'll take Erik down to the sub-basement in a moment."

"You are one _cold_ son of a bitch."

That, finally, got an expression from him besides the poker face. The corners of his mouth tipped up. "Thank you."

For just a moment, she considered leaping the desk and strangling him, but then both her common sense and her pride re-awoke. She couldn't believe she'd let Xavier's pet pretty boy get under her skin like that. "Fine," she said in an amused voice. "I shall re-confine myself to my quarters." And bending, she laid a hand on Erik's face, kissed his cheek quickly, and headed out.

Summers' voice followed her. "Remember Raven, Jean knows where you are at all times, no matter what you look like. Put on some clothes, and stay on the third floor."

"Fuck you," she replied pleasantly as she let the door go.

"You're not my type," she heard before it shut.

"Oh, but I could be," she purred, and just for the hell of it, morphed into Jean Grey. There was no intended purpose in the transformation besides spite, yet the change gave her an idea.

He _was_ a strategist, as Erik had warned. She still hated his guts but had learned a new respect for him today, and she knew that if she were he, she'd remind someone about Jean's telepathic mind net only if it weren't perfect. Not a bluff so much as a seemingly casual reminder that he hoped she didn't examine too closely.

"Jean knows where I am at all times, Cyclops? Let's test that theory," she muttered, and instead of returning to her room, headed down the hall to the den where the kids often gathered. Scott's challenge to her concern for them had pissed her off. She cared more than he could know about the ones who couldn't pass; she cared so much, in fact, she'd take some away from him.

As she entered the lounge, several kids looked up. "Dr. Grey!" they said. "How's the professor?"

"Doing well for now," she replied, smiling at them and coming over to sit on the couch among them, squeezing the hands of those who looked especially anxious, including a young boy who Brotherhood intelligence told her was Artie Maddicks, a mute with a snake tongue and deadly poison fangs. He could be useful to them, when he got older. "How are you, Artie?" she asked.

He appeared momentarily startled, then smiled and nodded. "Good, I'm glad," she said, giving him another warm smile before turning to the others and listening to their questions. These, she bluffed answers to and asked a subtle few of her own, hoping to begin a mental list of any who - like St. John - might not be sold on Xavier's theory of peaceful co-existence.

* * *

Artie was completely confused when Dr. Grey spoke to him verbally instead of telepathically, and was even more confused when she didn't respond to his own greeting. So he stood next to Illyana - Piotr's little sister and Terry's roommate - listening for a while.

After ten minutes, he was virtually certain that whoever this was, she wasn't Dr. Grey, and he didn't like some of the questions she was asking. He waited five minutes more, then smiled and waved, heading out casually so it didn't arouse suspicion. Clear of the room, though, he dashed for the professor's office, but Mr. Summers wasn't in there. He was about to try contacting either Dr. Grey or the professor telepathically, but wasn't sure if he could manage it, when a blond man Artie had never seen before came down the stairwell and headed towards the elevator himself.

Who on earth was this? But Artie hurried over, tugging at his sleeve and pointing to the elevator. On his palm pilot, he typed, "Need 2 C doc," then faked a silent sneeze.

"You're sick, too?" the blond man asked. Artie nodded, and the other said, "Come on, then," as the elevator opened. "I'll get you to the medbay." He glanced at Artie. "You can't talk?" In reply, Artie opened his mouth to show his tongue. "Oh," the blond replied, looking startled. "I'm Alex Blanding, by the way - Scott's brother. Mr. Summers, I mean."

Artie smiled back. The other had hesitated no more than a second upon seeing the tongue; in Artie's experience, that was a pretty calm reaction. As soon as the elevator doors opened, he dashed out and ran for the medbay, leaving Mr. Blanding to shout behind him.

Inside the medbay doors, he spotted Dr. Grey working with Dr. McCoy at one of the computers, and instant relief washed over him. He shouted telepathically, _Dr. Grey!_

Turning her head, she saw him there, and he felt her instantly riffle his memories. Then shoving a vial of something at Dr. McCoy, she raced out the door. Artie followed. Alex Blanding was still in the hallway outside and stared at them both as Dr. Grey hurried for the elevator. The doors flew apart and she ran in, Artie still following. The elevator shot up - faster than it usually did, Artie thought. When the doors opened, Dr. Grey stalked out and headed down the hall toward the den. As she moved, Artie saw the air around her crackle and ignite, leaving an aura in her wake like wings of flame. Startled, he fell back against a wall.

_**"Mystique!"**_ she thundered in a voice that was louder than human normal. It shook the walls.

The other "Dr. Grey" emerged from the den, curious students behind her. As she moved, she changed, turning blue with hair even redder than Dr. Grey's. "My Jean, you're looking . . . fiery." But the blue woman didn't appear frightened.

_**"What do you think you're doing?"**_

"Just visiting." She turned back to the students behind her. "It was nice to meet all of you, especially you, Illyana." And she calmly walked up the hall, past Dr. Grey - still with the flame wings and glowy eyes - but stopped near Artie (half hidden behind a column). "Your informant, I presume?" She glanced back at Jean. "Not as omnipotent as you pretend, are you?" And she continued on to the staircase, mounting the steps.

When she'd gone, Dr. Grey . . . diminished, returning to her usual self, a tall woman in a white labcoat. She studied the scared faces. "Don't listen to a thing she might have said. Remember - she pretended to be Bobby so she could try to kill the professor and drive Rogue away to where Magneto could kidnap her. They don't care about anything but their war. We're all just pawns." She ran a hand through her hair then, looking surprisingly vulnerable compared to the firebird woman of a moment before. "I need to go back down to the sub-basement."

"Dr. Grey - how _is_ the professor?" Jamie Madrox asked.

"He's very sick," Dr. Grey admitted. "We're doing everything we can."

"Thanks," Jamie replied, and Dr. Grey headed back to the elevator.

Once she was out of earshot, Illyana asked, "Did you see her go all weird and demon-eyed?"

"Yeah, I thought she was gonna kick Mystique's _ass_," Jamie replied. "Too cool."

Illyana glanced at him. "Are you insane? I'd feel safer with Mystique than Dr. Grey these days. I'm going to see my brother and parents." And she walked off. Scratching his nose, Artie wondered if he should tell Dr. Grey or Mr. Summers what she'd said?

* * *

"What the hell was that all about?" asked a voice behind Hank.

After Jean's abrupt departure, Hank had been left with Scott in the main medbay, and now, they turned to see a tall, blond stranger standing just inside the medbay doors. "Alex," Scott said, walking over to the other man and ushering him further into the room.

Ah, Hank thought - so this was Scott's younger brother.

"It is very good to make your acquaintance, Mr. Blanding," Hank said, gloving up to offer a hand, which the newcomer took. "I'm Hank McCoy."

"Good to meet you, too. And 'Alex' is fine." He glanced at his brother. "Scott said you're an old friend?"

"Yes. I was still doing my residency when Scott first arrived here, years ago. Now, I work for the CDC in Atlanta. I was called to New York when Legacy first surfaced." Scott had warned Hank that Alex knew nothing of the X-Men. "Thank you for agreeing to come down and submit to a DNA test. It's very important that we be able to type your X-gene - and thank you, too, for trusting us with the knowledge that you are a mutant."

Alex looked down, then eyed Scott sidelong. "My father's a doctor - my adopted father, I mean. He didn't have the usual prejudices, I guess you'd say. We've kept my mutancy quiet due to the current political situation." He paused, adding, "After meeting Scott, and he was, well -"

"- blunt about being a mutant," Scott finished.

"I went ahead and told him I was, too, when I got here last night. Seemed stupid to hide it."

Hank was nodding as he pulled out a swab and test tube to take a buccal sample. "If you'll open your mouth wide? This will only take a moment." Alex did as instructed and Hank swiped the inside of the cheek area, then popped the swab in the test tube and sealed the top, writing Alex's name on the side label. "I trust that Scott has briefed you on proper precautions, being in this house at the moment?"

"Yeah," Alex replied. "I'm being careful."

"He didn't pick the best time to come visit," Scott said.

"You sounded pretty upset about everything in that email," Alex retorted. "I wanted to come."

This frank revelation of Scott's emotional state had obviously disconcerted Scott; Hank knew he preferred to conceal his feelings if he thought them weak. "I am upset," he agreed now, "but you being here where you could catch the virus doesn't make me feel better. You should go home."

Alex didn't reply to that, and Hank watched them surreptitiously. Despite their years apart, they had many of the same mannerisms, no doubt acquired as children. They also appeared to share the same stubborn streak. Placing the test tube safely in a stainless steel holder, Hank turned back to Alex. "If I may be so bold . . . what, precisely, _is_ your mutation?"

"I, uh, shoot these yellow fire-bolt thingies out of my hands."

"Thingies?" Scott asked, half-laughing.

"Well I don't have a _name_ for them. I can heat stuff, too, like a microwave."

Playing a hunch, Hank said, "I'd like to take a few x-rays of your hands and chest area."

"X-rays won't tell you anything," Alex warned. "They won't come out at all."

"You white them out, don't you?" Hank inquired, suppressing a smile. Alex nodded. "So does your brother. And if the cause is the same - an energy conversion involving high levels of radiation - you may have won the mutant lottery when it comes to Legacy, Alex."

"Why?"

"My body fries bacteria and viruses," Scott replied. "It's a side-effect of my mutation. When's the last time you had a cold or the flu, or anything like that?"

Alex obviously had to think about it. "Uh - not since high school."

"Before your mutation manifested?"

"Yeah."

Scott turned to look at Hank, who simply nodded. "I will run some additional tests, to be sure."

* * *

"How are you feeling?" Scott asked, sticking his head around the door.

Warren glanced up from his laptop; he'd been trying to answer the email he hadn't felt up to answering for two days. "I thought your brother was down here?"

"He's with Hank, who's running tests. They think Alex may be like me with a mutation that inactivates viruses." Warren nodded and tried to suppress any resentment about that as Scott walked over to sit down on the side of the bed. "You look better," Scott said.

"I feel a bit better - enough to sit up without getting nauseous."

"Did you tell Jean?"

"This morning. She took some blood and urine and ran off like a kid at Christmas."

Scott snorted, but didn't sound amused. Instead, he ran a palm along the top bone of Warren's wing. "I'm afraid to hope."

"You and me, both. How's Piotr?"

"Not good. He's got half his family at the mansion. Hank's told him to metal up periodically; apparently, it helps to slow the infection. But he can't hold that form forever. He still has to eat. War, I don't know if he's going to see Monday." He dropped his hand from Warren's wing. "And you caught it before him."

"Yesterday, I didn't expect to see the end of the week, never mind Monday. Today . . . "

Before either could go further, Bobby Drake appeared - coughing - in the doorway. Warren looked up and Scott turned. "Bobby? What are you doing out of bed?"

"I wondered if I could talk to Mr. Worthington?"

Surprised, Warren shifted his gaze to Scott, who shrugged and stood. "I'll see you later," Scott said. "I've got to get back to work."

Bobby let him pass, trying not to cough on him, then came in and shut the door. Like Ororo, he was dragging an IV pole, and sat down in the chair Ro had occupied earlier. Warren's room was starting to feel like Grand Central Station. "What's up?" Warren asked. "And you can stop calling me 'Mr. Worthington.' You're not a student anymore. 'Warren' is fine."

"Okay - Warren. You remember the night you found me eating ice cream?"

"The night I infected you, you mean?"

Bobby shrugged. "Not your fault." And Warren was a bit relieved that the boy didn't blame him, even if he still blamed himself. "And yeah, that night - we had a talk. You said you, uh, were pretty tolerant, and, uh, you asked me some questions."

Warren had a good idea now where this was going. "I am tolerant, Bobby."

But Bobby didn't reply immediately, sat playing with the line on his IV instead and coughing every 20 to 30 seconds, a rattling sound none too different from Warren's yesterday. Warren let silence do the work, and finally, Bobby admitted, "I was in love with John," but his confession sounded more tired than shy or anxious, as if he'd been 'round and 'round with it in his own head to the point he just needed to say it aloud. "At least, I think I was."

"What makes you unsure?"

"Well, for one thing he was a guy. I don't . . . I didn't think I . . . I like _girls_. Or at least, I used to, before meeting John. Do you think it could be - I don't know - a fluke?"

"I think it could be that you like girls and guys both."

"You mean, like, bi-sexual?"

"Yes, 'like bi-sexual.'"

"Isn't that just a denial of being gay?"

"Not at all. _I'm_ bi-sexual, Bobby. I like women. And men." Maybe he shouldn't have admitted that, but just now, it seemed important to be honest. Bobby was gaping.

"So you and Scott . . . "

". . . are very close friends. Scott's straight, as I told you before. But yes, I loved him - still do, but it's changed with time. That happens. I wouldn't trade our relationship for any society-page wedding. Love is love. If I've learned nothing else in 30 years, I've learned that. Stop worrying so much about labels and internal plumbing, and be glad if you're lucky enough to find it."

Bobby turned his head aside, interrupted by a terrible coughing fit, before he could manage, "That's just it. Maybe I did find it - but I lost it, too. He's fucking _dead_."

Warren started to say, "But you're not," or remind Bobby he was 18; he'd find it again. Platitudes. "I'm sorry," he said instead. "It hurts like hell when you can't have what you want most."

"Yeah," Bobby replied. "It does."

* * *

Logan arrived in the medbay at noon on the dot, climbing onto an exam table and holding out his arm. "Let's go," he barked to the room at large. Jean and Hank both looked up, trading a glance.

_He's prompt,_ Hank sent. _Did he get that from the military?_

_He's feeling frustrated,_ Jean replied. _Giving blood is what he can do. You'll have to watch him to be sure he doesn't try to give too often. _But she made no move to rise, kept her nose buried in the most recent blood work on Warren. His antibodies were definitely up; he was responding to the serum. Hank watched her a minute, then sighed and rose to take Logan's blood.

When he was done, Hank called, "Would you please get Logan some orange juice? I'm taking the draw to the separator."

Jean pursed her lips but could hardly argue. It was just orange juice. Rising, she went to the fridge and took out one of the stock of bottles they kept there, bringing it to Logan. He took it, barely looking at her, and drank it down, then handed her back the empty bottle. "How long're you going to keep avoiding me?" he asked, still not looking at her.

"I'm not avoiding you -"

"Coulda fooled me."

"Logan, whatever we had . . . or thought we had . . . I came back for Scott."

"I know that." He turned then to look right at her with those all-color/no-color eyes. "But the only way you're gonna shut the door is to walk up and shut it. Right now, you're hurrying past."

And there it was - some _pull_ in his eyes, some compulsion. She could know. She could reach out and touch his mind and take it all - everything he remembered about whatever it was they'd shared. She could understand. She could _remember_.

Turning on her heel, she fled to her office.

* * *

Hank was storing Logan's serum and assessing their stocks so he could talk to Jean about who would get the serum therapy, when he realized they were one vial short. Some of Emma's serum was missing. At first, he thought he'd simply miscounted or that it had been moved accidentally, but a hurried search turned up nothing.

Someone had taken it. Straightening and shutting the refrigerator door, Hank considered. There were only a handful of people who knew the value of that serum, and only two besides himself who could actually administer it. And of those two . . . .

Teeth clenched, Hank stalked out of the main medlab for Jean's office and knocked roughly. She opened, and one look at his face turned hers guilty. She knew exactly what he'd come about. "You gave it to Warren, didn't you?" Hank demanded. It had to have been either Warren or Xavier, and Warren was a bit better today.

Jean turned back into the room to retrieve a pair of printouts from her desk. "His blood work from yesterday, and his blood work from today. I think we should give it to Piotr, Terry, and the others."

"Jean - we hadn't decided . . . !"

"I know," she said, hugging herself. "I know. It was wrong." She looked up at him with haunted eyes. "I'd do it again." He felt his jaw working, unsure how to respond to that. "We need War, Hank. The school, the X-Men - we need him. Without his financial support, it'll all collapse. Besides, if there was to be a bad serum reaction, I'd rather it happened to an adult than a kid -"

"Jean - shut up." He was torn between anger and understanding. "None of that is why you picked him, and frankly, I'm more inclined to forgive you for the real reasons. He's my friend, too." Hank looked down at the printouts. "Someone had to be the guinea pig. I'd have picked Piotr, but . . . ." He trailed off, then looked up again. "I say we ready the serum and start administering it. Emma's goes to first-generation students who're showing symptoms, and Logan's to second-generation."

"What about Charles?"

Hank shook his head. "I already talked to him. He's refused it, unless there's some left over."

"There won't be."

He met her eyes. "You know as well as I do that it wouldn't make any difference for him, at this stage."

Putting her hand over her mouth, she turned away.

"Jean, just be glad it seems to be working for Warren."

"I am." She lowered the hand. "I'm giving you some of Logan's, too, Hank."

"I'm not showing symptoms -"

"- but you _will_. We need you on your feet."

Together they went back into the main medbay and started prepping the serum.

* * *

At sunset on Friday, Jean emerged from the sub-basement again. She hadn't slept at all, but the cautiously optimistic results of Warren's serum therapy left her feeling able to spare a few hours to relax. They weren't out of the woods, but for the first time since Bobby had shown up in the medbay coughing, she had some real sense of hope - or as much hope as possible with the professor himself in a hospital bed. She still couldn't shake the sight of him, looking frail and old on the crisp, white sheets.

Now, she grabbed a sandwich and headed outside. She needed to feel the wind on her face, but more to the point, she hadn't sensed Scott anywhere in the building.

She found him down by the lake - long his retreat when upset or angry - his silhouette dark at the pier's end against the red-gold glare of sunlight off the surface. He was just standing there. She started down the embankment even as a bolt of red flashed out raggedly into the water, sending up a sparkling sheet like a giant hand dragged along the surface. What was he doing? Trying to scare the fish? A minute later, it came again, but even less well aimed. He took out some of the cattails on the other side, and she heard a distinct, "Dammit!" as her foot hit the pier. He turned at the sound, his face a study in frustration.

"What's wrong?" she called as she walked down to join him.

"I can't control them now!" he said, sounding somewhere south of annoyed. "I can turn them on and off, yes - but aim? Control the width or size of the blast? For-fucking-get it!" He rubbed at his brow. "Mystique won't stay in her damn room, and Erik - he disappeared into his after talking to Charles and hasn't come out since. He's up to something. Meanwhile, here I am, unable to control my beams. What the hell good will I be if they do try something?"

He was working himself up, all the frustration of the past two weeks boiling to the surface, and she gripped his face between both her hands. "Stop it, Scott. We knew you wouldn't have instant control. The fact you can turn them on and off at will this soon after is _further_ along than I thought you'd be. It's not like you haven't had a dozen other things to do!" She pushed her forehead to his. "It'll take time, hon."

"But I need to be Cyclops _now_."

"Scott, listen to me." She pulled away to look into his eyes, so very, very blue. "Remember how long it took before? Months and months - years even, for the kind of precision you've got now. At least you're not starting over from scratch. It'll _come_."

"I had the luxury of time back then. Do I now? What if I'm _needed_?"

"If the alternative is living every hour of your life with that metal _thing_ strapped to your eyes, we'll _make_ time." She let his face go. "As for being needed . . . ." She turned back towards the house and reached out with her hand and her power both, calling what she wanted to her across the distance. It took only a minute, tearing along, before it snapped to a stop in her hand. His visor. She offered it to him. "You learned to control the beams with this, and there's no reason you can't still use it if you need to even while you're learning to control your beams without it."

He took it from her fingers and settled it on his face, then suddenly whipped his head around, opening the aperture so that a beam of red lanced out, cutting a knife-neat swathe across the water's surface. "See?" she said with a smile, "Cyclops hasn't gone anywhere."

They sat together on the end of the pier until the sun was fully down and the sky had gone black, punctuated by pinpoints of summer stars. Jean was nestled between Scott's knees, her head back against his shoulder and his arms wrapped about her. She could have slept like that, but she still had things to do, and so did he. At least they'd had a quiet hour to themselves; it was good to remember what that felt like.

Hand-in-hand, his visor folded up and tucked into his breast pocket, they strolled back to the mansion and by unspoken agreement, headed downstairs to the medlab. No sooner had they walked through the doors though than Hank called, "There you are!" He came hurrying over, frowning. Glancing from her to Scott, he took a breath, then said, "We didn't get enough of the vaccine virus sequences from Emma's PCRs to reconstruct the vaccine itself." He shook his head. "I was hoping . . . but I can't say I'm surprised."

Letting Scott go, she headed straight across the floor to where Hank had been working on a rear table, the PCR results scattered on the steel surface. "What _did_ we get?"

"Enough for some hints," he said, joining her. "We're better off than we were, but still - we're talking months, maybe even years."

"No!" she snarled, scattering the sheets with a mental flick. They ignited like fire moths, incinerating in seconds, and she stared at the ash-littered metal. "You had copies?"

"Jean -" She turned to look at him and Scott, both wide-eyed.

"I _know_." She rubbed her forehead. It seemed that every time she lost her temper these days, the flames came. They might not harm her, but papers - or other people - weren't so impervious. "Maybe it's time to think about contacting Essex, to try Scott's ploy. It might work or it might not, but we can't be any worse off than we are right now."

Scott watched her, then nodded once. "Do we know how to contact him?"

"He didn't leave me a number - or rather, I walked out first. But Emma will know how to get a hold of him, and I can get a hold of Emma." She glanced towards the door. "I'll be in Cerebro."

"And I'll go talk to the professor." Scott glanced at Hank, who appeared worried.

"I still have my doubts about the safety of this little espionage gambit," Hank admitted.

"I'm afraid we're way past 'safe' right now, Hank," Scott said. Jean had to agree. She left them there to go contact Emma.

* * *

Scott had been closeted with Xavier for twenty minutes as Hank grew increasingly anxious the more he thought about this whole scenario. While he supported the professor in his creation of a team intended to extract newly manifested mutant kids from perilous situations, he'd never been comfortable with the other extra-legal activities of the X-Men. Even if Xavier had secured a backstairs agreement with the FBI to look the other way, the X-Men were still vigilantes, not government operatives, and Hank feared that someday, their actions would get someone killed. Jean's fate at Alkali Lake - however temporary it had turned out to be - was a case in point. They just weren't trained, field-rated agents, and it worried him.

The ringing phone in his temporary "office" startled him out of his musings. Digging through the paper strewn across the desktop, he grabbed for the receiver, wondering who was calling him at ten in the evening. "Hank McCoy."

"I thought you'd be back in Atlanta by now?"

It took him a moment to recognize the voice. "Trish Tilby?"

"I called the CDC, looking for you, but they said you were still in New York. What are you doing up here?"

Cautious because Trish was both clever and suspicious by nature, he said, "Attempting to order the personal research papers of an old friend who was a specialist in mutant genetics. She died during the Blackout, but I'm hopeful her work might help us find the vaccine faster."

"I thought you said it was next to impossible to get vaccines for lentiviruses?"

Damn. He'd unconsciously spoken from the knowledge that a vaccine existed - which was exactly why he had to be careful with her. She noticed things like that. "It is," he said now. "But as this particular one has filovirus proteins, there may be something we can do."

"I heard about that - or read about it, I suppose I should say. I'm still following the story. I don't suppose I have to tell you the official death toll in the U.S. just passed a hundred?"

"I heard," he said, and that hundred didn't count the unofficial dead, either, such as St. John.

"I've been looking into what the CDC has been releasing, and was hoping I could talk to you about it. I get the impression it's a bit . . . strange for a virus to be a hybrid like this? True?"

"It is unusual, no question."

"How would that happen? In nature?"

Hank - who'd been compulsively turning a pen end-over-end - froze. While the CDC knew the virus was engineered, just as he did, they hadn't released that information to the public yet by order of the Office of Homeland Security. As it was, Hank was breaking God knew how many laws by keeping to himself the name of the man who'd created it. He should have revealed what he knew, but if he did, he'd be compromising the school's security - and that was another reason he had his doubts about Scott's plan to trick Essex out of the vaccine. When all was said and done, they'd still have to come up with an explanation for how they'd acquired it.

Personally, Hank thought they should pinpoint Essex's lab, then give the NSA an anonymous tip and let _them_ raid the place. That way, both the vaccine and Essex would be in U.S. custody.

_And just how would the agents capture a mutant like Essex?_, another part of his mind asked. Magneto had been apprehended and contained, however briefly, because Scott, Jean, Ro and Logan had left him trussed up like a Christmas Turkey with specific instructions for his safe incarceration. Despite what Jean had told him about Essex after their meeting, Hank still wasn't sure exactly what Essex's powers _were_, or the extent of his electrical control.

The whole quandary was giving him a headache. "Hank?" Trish's voice came over the line. "Are you still there?"

"Yes, I'm still here. I'm sorry, I'm just . . . tired and a little stressed. Besides, I thought you weren't talking to me?" Maybe he could deflect her curiosity by changing the subject.

"I was mad at you, yes, but when I got back to the office, I had to admit I could see why you took offense at what I said." It was straightforward and without whining. "I'm sorry. In my business, one gets used to one's sources expecting something in return for their tips and information."

"I am a teacher -"

"- and a good one. Thank you for the lesson."

He couldn't resist a small smile. "Flattery will get you everywhere."

"Including an answer to my question about how this virus came to be? I admit, it doesn't seem like something that would occur naturally."

So much for redirecting her. He should have known better, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Trish, there is some information that I am simply not at liberty to tell you."

"So there is more to this - ?"

"Trish -"

"'No comment,' I got it." She paused, then said, "Hank, I'm hitting dead-ends everywhere I look. No one's talking."

"Because we can't."

"And that's damn suspicious. Someone _made_ this virus, didn't they? It's biological warfare aimed at mutants."

"I told you -"

"'No comment,' I know. Listen, I'm not going to ask you for something that could cost you your job, but this is important. If there's some terrorist group out there creating viruses engineered to kill mutants, where will it stop?" He could hear her take a breath. "So let's do this backwards. If this is a naturally occurring virus, you just tell me how it might have happened; you can be as vague as you need to be. But if it's not . . . well, just reply with 'no comment' and you haven't actually told me anything you can be prosecuted for, right? And I won't use your name. I give you my word."

Hank considered, but only for a moment. He realized that at some point, he'd come to trust Trish Tilby. So he said, "'No comment.'"

On the other end of the line, there was the briefest pause, then, "Thank you."

"And Trish - off the record?"

"Absolutely."

"We're working on it. Trust me on that."

"I do. Good luck, Hank." Another hesitation, then, "And before you go back to Atlanta, if you have time, would you be interested in dinner? No tape recorders or cameras allowed."

He blinked. Had she . . . had she just asked him for a _date_? "Uh, I . . . yeah. Yeah, dinner sounds wonderful, Ms. Tilby."

"Excellent. I'll be in touch."

* * *

Feeling at loose ends, Logan had come down to the medbay, though he wasn't sure what he thought he could do there. He was neither a medic nor much for offering comfort, and it killed him to walk through the diagnostic and surgery bays full of makeshift beds with sick children under bright, sterile lights. He was reminded of hospital tents in wartime.

He talked to those kids he knew, and a few whom he didn't. Bobby appeared to be in the worst shape, as he'd been the first to fall ill. As white as his sheets, he lay on his cot, shaking and sweating and coughing. But he wasn't yet _bleeding_, and that was the symptom they feared most. Logan sat down on the edge of the cot. "You sure you won't let us call your parents, kid?"

"No," he replied, rolling so as to turn his back.

"What happened at your house last October . . . it don't mean they'd react the same now."

Bobby didn't reply.

"You're gonna have to tell 'em eventually, even if you make it through this."

"No, I don't."

Frustrated, Logan gave up. "Hey - you tried maybe dropping your body temps down to kill off the virus or something?"

"Hank said viruses aren't that delicate; I'd just put it into hibernation. If I get much worse, though, he's going to put me in the DR and let me freeze my body as far down as I can take it, but that'll just slow things, like Pete steeling up. It won't let me fight it off." He shrugged. "Hank gave me a dose of your serum earlier, though. He says I might start feeling better by morning."

"Hope he's right, kid." Logan patted the boy's shoulder and moved on, wondering if he could talk Hank into taking another liter of blood even though it had been only nine hours since the last? Right now, it was his healing factor, not his fighting skills, that might save lives.

* * *

"Yes, that's right. We're willing to make the trade."

Scott was talking to Nathaniel Essex on the phone in Jean's office, while Jean and Hank stood to the side, listening. Jean had coerced Emma into giving her Essex's cell phone number. Now, she watched Scott's mouth thin as he replied, "Because I have 13 sick kids and three sick adults and the numbers will only go up. I don't like your terms, Dr. Essex, but I'm reasonable."

A pause. "Yes, I've told Jean we're doing it." Pause. "Of course she protested, but I told her it wasn't up for debate. Now, our terms are relatively simple. You produce the vaccine and five pints of serum from vaccinated mutants - five pints of _serum_, not whole blood. In return, you will receive one sample of semen from me, and will be permitted one harvest of eggs from Jean. It's been short notice, but she's already put herself on a regimen of Clomid and hCG, and estimates that she'll be ready for an ultrasound aspiration around three p.m. Sunday. You can come here to make the exchange."

Pause. "We'll consent to an exchange at another locale only so long as the vaccine and serum is turned over to us upon Jean's arrival, and can be tested for authenticity." Pause. "No, we don't take you at your word. What reason do we have to do so? You will get samples from us only on the condition that we have a verifiable vaccine and serum first. You tell us where to go, and we'll be there Sunday at ten a.m., to have time to run tests on the vaccine and serum." A pause. "No, Jean'll bring a field kit with her. We'd prefer to use our own tests, not yours."

He listened more, wrote something down, then hung up and raised the sticky pad with an address. "He bit. We meet in the war room at eight in the morning, to plan this operation. I'll go talk to Doug about what op-tech we'll need."

It was some hours later, after Jean had grabbed a quick catnap on the couch in her office, that Edna beeped her. The clock read 5:37 in the morning. Groggily, she got up and put on her lab coat, heading out into the main medbay. Edna, who'd been on night shift, called to her from one of the private rooms. Jean could hear sounds of retching even as she approached, and Edna came out into the hall. Her scrubs and gloves were flecked with pink-tinged vomit.

"Warren's taken a turn for the worst."

Jean grabbed the wall for support.


	37. Dark Phoenix

With a hawklike cry of despair, Jean Grey shook herself free of her human flesh and spread fiery wings, becoming again the Lady of the Lake - formless, unbounded, powerful. Immortal. Yet human enough to grieve. In this form, she found it effortless to touch the spirits of those around her, to suffer alongside her sick children, to feel the life and strength trickle out of those who were dear to her. She wept flame.

_Jean -_ came a familiar mental voice. _You must not act on your rage. Come back to yourself . . . ._

Yet it was grief as much as rage that propelled her upward through the mansion levels until she hovered free above it. Mortal constrains such as walls and roofs meant nothing. Nor did distance.

The ones who had orchestrated this catastrophe would pay, and she would take from them what she needed to save her children, her brother, and her father. Now, she must only find them.

Turning towards the city full of minds both bright and dark, she headed south.

* * *

By nature a morning person, Ororo was already awake when she heard the horrible sound of retching from Warren's room, then Edna's footsteps as she bustled in to speak to him in a soft voice. A few minutes later, Jean arrived, as well - followed by an awful cry and a red-gold flash of energy, then a loud whoosh as if all the air had rushed up and out, though it left no damage in its wake.

Startled, Ororo grabbed a robe and exited her room to find Edna still standing in the hall, her face stark with shock - and fear. They looked at each other, even as the professor's mental voice roused the whole team. He might be physically weak and worsening, but one would never know it from the power of his mind voice.

Warren was calling from inside his room and Edna hurried back to him as Ororo made her way into Xavier's room, sitting down beside his bed and taking his hand in hers. "What was that?"

"Jean has shed her skin once more, returning to what she was when first she rose from the lake." He looked away from her, up at the ceiling, though Ororo didn't think he was seeing it; he'd turned inward mentally. "She has gone after Nathaniel Essex."

At a noise near the door, Ororo turned her head to see Warren, Edna fussing and telling him to go lie back down. "Can't," he said, though he did accept the chair Edna brought in. Wrapped in a blanket, he shivered violently and looked dreadful, swollen and pale with great, dark circles beneath his eyes. Ororo heard the distinctive _bamf_ of Kurt's explosive arrival in the hall beyond, then he entered as well, perching on a rolling cart in the corner to leave room for the others.

Hank wasn't far behind, no doubt having been in his office asleep, and just a minute or two later, Scott and Logan arrived with a sleepy and confused Doug on their heels. But to Ororo's surprise, looming in the doorway beyond, stood a fever-flushed Piotr. Edna was fussing at him, too, but he just shook his head.

Everyone assembled, Xavier propped himself up with help from Ororo and Edna. "Our plans will have to change if we are to save Jean. She has lost touch with her human self, become the creature of fire and air that she was when she first resurrected, and she is bent on destroying Nathaniel Essex, and perhaps Sebastian Shaw as well."

"Jean wouldn't -"

"Yes, Scott, she would - and will. The discarnate creature that left here has been reduced to the most basic of life impulses - the 'id,' if you will."

"Gone feral," Logan added.

"Something like that, yes. Frustration, rage, grief . . . and the drive to save what she loves. She has no more control - or morality - than a frightened, hurting child. We must recall 'Jean Grey' to herself - help her rediscover her ego and superego. She must reincarnate, or there's no telling what she will do."

Scott was pressing the heels of his hands to his temples. "Jean wouldn't kill anyone -"

"_Jean_ wouldn't, no - " Xavier began, but Logan interrupted.

"This ain't Jean, kid. This thing is to Jean what Wolverine is to Logan. I understand."

Scott dropped his hands to glare, but Logan didn't back down, and tension in the room spiked until Warren - unexpectedly - intervened. "You two, stop it," he said in a voice like a croak. "This is about Jean, not your insecurities." And everyone there blinked, as both Scott and Logan relaxed perceptibly. "So where _did_ she go?" Warren asked the professor.

"Into the city. She is seeking Essex . . . who is staying with Sebastian Shaw, I believe."

"I know how to find the Shaw mansion - but I don't think Jean does. It might give us a little time, if she has to locate them out of all the minds in New York."

"Given her current power levels," Xavier said, "that won't take long."

"Then we'd better get moving." And Warren rose to his feet.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?" Scott snapped.

Standing eye to eye with him, Warren replied calmly, "With you. It's going to take you and me both, Scott." He glanced past Scott to Logan. "And you, too. You know better than most of us what this must feel like for her."

Logan just nodded, but Scott was shaking his head violently - as was Hank. "Warren, you're in no shape -" Hank began.

"I'm _dying_, Monkey Toes," Warren snapped back, clearly losing patience. "Let's call a spade a spade. And there's not a damn thing anyone can do for me - but I might be able to do something for Jean. For God's sake, let me save my best friend!"

Silence fell until Xavier broke it. "If Angel thinks he has the strength" - the use of his code name wasn't lost on any of them - "then he should go with Cyclops. I fear he is right, and Scott will need backup. Wolverine will go with them. All three of you - be careful, and not only of Jean. I'm sure Shaw's mansion is well protected." Xavier nodded once. "Good luck."

Scott and Logan headed out, Warren supported between them. It was only then that Ororo noticed the scattery of white feathers on the floor. Warren's wings were molting. Leaning down, she picked up one and smoothed it between her fingers. So soft.

"The rest of you," Xavier said, "I believe it time to dispense with subtlety. We may not have a better chance to break into Essex's lab than now, while he is occupied by Jean. Storm, how do you feel?"

She raised her chin. "Better than yesterday, thanks to Logan's serum." And she did feel better.

The professor nodded, coughed, then said, "I want you to lead a second team made up of Beast, Doug, and Nightcrawler, to infiltrate Essex's lab. Cyclops was given the address. See if you can find the vaccine and remove it. Beast, do you have a way to verify the vaccine?"

"I already put together a field kit for Sunday - PCRs and such - but they'd take a few hours, at least. From what Emma said, I know the vaccine is a chartreuse-green. That's not exactly a typical color, and it'll narrow things down somewhat. I'll take a sample of anything that might even remotely fit the description."

Xavier nodded. "Do the best you can. I'll depend on Storm and Nightcrawler to get you into the building, and Doug to handle security, monitoring from outside. Have you had any luck with your investigations?" he asked Doug - who nodded.

"It's complex, to be sure, but not at as high a level as I'd feared. I don't think Essex really expected anyone to put all the pieces together."

"His arrogance serves our advantage."

"With Kurt's teleportation," Doug continued, "they can enter the building without difficulty, but the hard part will be accessing the high-security basement lab where he likely keeps the vaccine. It has infrared cameras. I could make a heat deflecting fabric, if I had time and resources, but under the circumstances -"

"Iceman," Ororo interrupted, glancing at Hank. "Is he well enough?"

Clearly annoyed, Hank replied, "If Warren is being permitted to participate, then I suppose I can't object to Bobby. More to the point, vaccines are typically kept in ultralow freezers or lyophilized - freeze-dried. We may need his talents for more than just entering the lab. If the vaccine thaws too rapidly, it would lose titer - that is, be less effective."

"What about me?" Piotr asked. "If Mr. Worthington and Bobby are going, I want to, as well . . . and for the same reasons. I want to do something that matters before the end."

Xavier studied Piotr for a moment, then nodded once, briefly. "Very well. Colossus and Iceman will accompany the team, Iceman into the building while Colossus will provide protection for Doug."

Storm stood. "Gentlemen, it's time to put on some leather. We'll take the van. Doug, how long do you need to gather your equipment?"

"Half an hour, maybe less," he said.

"I'll see all of you in the garage then," and she herded them out, leaving Edna with Xavier.

As her teammates were in front of her, none of them noticed when she was yanked backwards into Warren's now-empty room, a hand over her mouth. "I'm going, too," hissed a voice in her ear. Eyes sliding sidewise, Storm could just make out blue skin and fire-red hair, then Mystique released her. "Remember what I said, last fall? We'd make a good team, Storm Queen."

Ororo was taken aback. "Why should I trust you?"

"Because we're on the same side. That virus killed my student . . . and yours. More children will die, if we can't stop it. I have skills you need, and I want the vaccine in the hands of Henry McCoy just as badly as you do."

Storm remembered the stricken, guilty expression on Mystique's face in those last hours of John's life. "All right," she said. "But this is my op; you do as I tell you."

Mystique smiled. "Of course."

* * *

Between a late Friday night and a general dislike for seeing the sun rise, Sebastian Shaw was still sound asleep when an enormous explosion rocked his house, catapulting him straight out of bed. He landed on the floor as the roof came down, one of the heavy beams smacking into his king-sized bed, halted less than a foot above him. Too bad it hadn't hit him. Shocked, he peered over the bedside to see only an arm of the woman who'd spent the night, protruding from beneath plaster-dusted wood while the cream sheets beneath were turning red.

Grabbing a robe to cover himself, he scuttled for the door, keeping low to the ground, his cell phone out as he listened to his house security. "Total perimeter breach! The house has been compromised!"

"What the fuck is going on?" Shaw yelled back. "Who's attacking us?"

'Unknown, sir!" replied his chief of security. "Something just blew the roof off the house and the north wall is simply _gone_." An indrawn breath. "Oh, my God -!"

The line went dead.

"Shit," Shaw said, punching another auto-dial. "Shinobi!" he barked. "Are you there?"

There was no reply. Desperate for the safety of his only son, Shaw dashed out the door and down the hall towards the room that was Shinobi's . . . except a gaping hole stood where the room had been, as if a wrecking ball had torn into it. Devastated, Shaw moaned and clutched at his chest. "Shinobi -"

Beyond the hole in the wall, he could see the wreckage that had used to be his front lawn. Bushes had been ripped up, cars overturned, and the central fountain was reduced to rubble so that the broken pipes shot water straight up into the morning air, making a glittering arc.

Before he could wonder further, a voice echoed around him, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. It sounded vaguely female. **"SEBASTIAN SHAW, I HOLD THE LIFE OF YOUR CHILD HOSTAGE, JUST AS YOU HOLD THE LIVES OF MY CHILDREN. COME OUT WHERE I CAN SEE YOU!"**

What the hell? But for Shinobi's sake, Shaw chose to play along for the moment. Whoever it was couldn't know his own mutant power let him absorb any kinetic force from a punch to a bullet to a blast, making him effectively invulnerable and also superhumanly strong in direct proportion to the energy he absorbed. In fact, it was his habit every morning upon rising to work out with a punching bag in his gym so he was never depowered. Unfortunately, this morning's routine had been interrupted, and he was at low ebb. If only that roof beam had hit him . . . .

"I don't know where you are!" he shouted back now. "How can I come out where you can see me?"

"Come down to the foyer," the voice replied.

Shaw glanced over the rail of the upper mezzanine, down into the main hallway before the front door. An atrium of tropical plants, small pools and artificial waterfalls had once lain beneath a three-story glass ceiling. Very little was left, plants flattened beneath shattered pieces of the roof and the entire front entranceway ripped off. Water was splattered everywhere, along with bright, dying koi. But the grand staircase that connected all three floors at the hallway rear was still intact. Shaw might have tried escaping out the back, but he couldn't leave Shinobi. Perhaps his son was already dead and this just a ploy to lure him into the open, but he couldn't take that chance. So he stood up straight and tied the belt of his robe, running hands through his hair to smooth it down. Dignity was important, even when facing one's enemies. Especially when facing one's enemies.

He made his way to the staircase and descended to the main floor, passing through the destroyed atrium to stop directly in front of the now-missing doorway. On the porch beyond rose a column of fire. Almost Biblical, Shaw thought, and he understood how his security had been breached. This was no normal human threat. "Who are you, what do you want - and where is my son?"

The flame parted, revealing Shinobi - who lay unconscious on the ground. **"HE IS, SO FAR, UNHARMED. I WILL RETURN HIM TO YOU IN EXCHANGE FOR NATHANIEL ESSEX."**

"I don't bargain with nameless terrorists. Who are you?"

**"I AM . . . FIRE. I AM LIFE. I AM A PHOENIX REBORN. GIVE ME NATHANIEL ESSEX."**

From behind Shaw came the sound of enthusiastic clapping, and he spun to see Essex himself striding across the detritus- and koi-strewn floor. "Magnificent!" he cried out.

The fire-column didn't respond verbally, but did shrink into a form more birdlike, with great flame wings rising behind her body, head and neck straining forward, beak open, as if to snatch Essex right off the ground.

"Shinobi!" Shaw screamed, raw-throated. His son had been inside that column.

The bird ignored Shaw, as did Essex, who let fly with a bolt of pure electrical energy, strong enough to blackout an entire New York neighborhood and then some.

The firebird simply absorbed it.

Shaw wasn't sure whether the expression on Essex's face was more surprised or more ecstatic. "Magnificent," he cried again. "My magnificent creature!" And he raised his arms to her.

Her beak opened, and consumed him.

Whatever Essex had told Shaw about his ability to resuscitate himself, Shaw thought this more than even he could manage, and heard him shouting from within as the flames burned him alive.

But then the bird's head drew back, leaving Essex standing there, singed badly but alive.

"Where's my son!" Shaw shouted, awake to a new hope.

Turning her head, the bird spit flame at him and he ducked back, raising an arm to shield himself. Returning her attention to Essex, the firebird said, **"I WANT THE FORMULA FOR THE VACCINE."**

"Jean, Jean," Essex said, still grinning widely, "I named my terms. And I thought your partner had agreed to them?"

The wings extended and the flames roared higher, and Shaw's demolished house began to burn from the concentrated heat. In the distance, he could hear sirens. Though he lived on a large estate, an explosion of the magnitude that had rocked his house earlier wouldn't have gone unnoticed. "The authorities are on the way!" he shouted now, trying to get the bird's attention again. "Give me back my son and leave, and you might still get away!"

Yet even as he said it, he realized how ridiculous that was. What could New York's Finest do against this creature of fire and rage?

**"YOU DON'T CONCERN ME,"** the phoenix said, focused on him once more, **"EXCEPT AS YOU CONTRIBUTED TO THIS VIRUS' CREATION. IT'S KILLING MY CHILDREN. IN RETRIBUTION, YOU SHALL LOSE YOURS."**

"No!" Shaw shouted. "You said you'd give him back if I gave you Essex!"

**"BUT YOU DIDN'T. ESSEX GAVE ME HIMSELF." **Her flames roared even higher and Shaw screamed, helpless, as the blackened body of his son was regurgitated from the bird's beak onto a buckled marble floor. Enraged, Shaw bent to strike the ground and absorb the energy - but felt himself lifted straight up into the air, instead.

**"I THINK NOT, SEBASTIAN SHAW,"** the phoenix said. **"I UNDERSTAND HOW YOUR POWER WORKS - CAN SEE IT IN YOUR MIND. YOU MAY ABSORB STRIKES AGAINST YOU, BUT HOW WOULD YOU DO WITH THE OPPOSITE? HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE **_**STRETCHED**_** . . . "**

Searing agony tore at all Shaw's joints as he was spread-eagled against nothing and pulled limb from limb - but not quickly. "Suffer as my children suffer," she said, her thundering voice vicious and joyful. "Ache in every muscle and joint as this virus pains them."

And as he hung there, teeth gritted, the phoenix's attention returned to Essex**. "YOU WILL GIVE ME THE FORMULA FOR THE VACCINE . . . OR I WILL TAKE IT FROM YOUR MIND."**

"You can't!" Essex called back. He'd collapsed onto the ground, arms around himself in agony from the severe burns covering all his exposed skin, but defiant. "My mind is sealed to you."

**"THEN I'LL CRACK IT LIKE AN EGG,"** the phoenix replied, and Shaw watched Essex arch backward, hands gripping his skull, screaming and jerking. If Shaw had any satisfaction at all, it was in seeing that son of a bitch rendered helpless. **"GIVE ME THE FORMULA!" **she cried, and the sound of it shook the entire building.

"You're killing me!" Essex bellowed, and his body abruptly stopped seizing. He propped himself up on his elbows, panting - and laughing, damn him, though blood trickled from his nose over his cracked skin. "You can't take it, my beautiful creature. It's beyond even your ability to strip away. The only way I'll let you have it is if you heal me and give me what I asked for."

And the firebird screamed again, a sound full of fury and despair. Her form expanded until she was higher than the roof, neck arched, wings extended. **"THEN DIE LIKE THOSE YOU'VE KILLED!" **And Shaw watched Essex's body boil from within, exploding outward into a million pieces. There was no resuscitating from that.

It was the last thing he saw. In the next moment, the phoenix turned her lambent eyes on him, and he felt his body ripped apart -

* * *

Saturday morning, the mansion was in a contained uproar. Some noise - no one was sure just what it had been - had awoken half the students . . . only to find the adults cloistered downstairs in the sub-basement. A little before seven, Kitty saw Mr. Summers, Logan, and Mr. Worthington (looking one step away from the morgue) exit the elevator. Mr. Worthington was leaning heavily on Mr. Summers, or she guessed she should say Cyclops, as he was in uniform. "What's going on?" Sam Guthrie asked them.

"X-Men business," Cyclops said, which translated to "I can't tell you." Then he half-carried Mr. Worthington down the main hall toward the dining room that led to the rear hallway, and the garage. Whatever it was must be big, Kitty thought, for Mr. Worthington to be going, too.

Fifteen minutes later, more adults appeared upstairs, also in uniform. Ms. Munroe - Storm - lead them, and they included Dr. McCoy (he actually had a uniform?), Nightcrawler, Bobby, looking pale but on his feet . . . and to Kitty's astonishment, both Mystique and Piotr - sweaty, flushed, but walking. Pete was even in uniform. Ignoring her usual awe of the X-Men, she ran forward to grab at him, but he shook her off . . . gently. "Katya, don't touch."

"You can't go!" she pleaded. "You're sick!"

The other adults had turned to watch, but Piotr made a small gesture and Storm motioned them away, leaving Kitty and Piotr in the hallway - watched by half the student body. "Dining hall," Kitty said, leading Piotr in there. Thankfully, no one followed.

"I have to go," he told her.

"You're too sick!"

He smiled and reached up as if to touch her cheek - but didn't. "We're going after a vaccine for this virus. It could save a lot of people -"

"You?" She gripped his arms, Legacy be damned.

"Not me." He shook his head and stepped away from her again. "It's too far along in me. But this is what I can do - maybe the last thing I can do. I can help them get that vaccine."

She wanted to rage and hit and scream. Instead, sobs choked her. "It's not fair," she said, over and over, yanking at her hair.

Steel fingers pulled her hands away. He'd metaled up so he could touch her safely. "Stop it, Katya." She looked up at him. "I have to go; they're waiting."

"Bend down," she said. Baffled, he obeyed and she phased, standing on tiptoe to kiss him. His steel form had no body fluids, and she was a ghost. They could touch so, however ephemeral. "I love you," she told him, and just now, didn't care about her dignity or whether he felt the same.

Smiling, he reached out to draw his fingers through her insubstantial hair. "If you were just a little older . . . ."

"Would you have waited for me to grow up?" she asked.

"I would have waited," he said, then turned on his heel and hurried out the other side of the dining hall.

* * *

This early on a Saturday morning, the hallways of Grail Corporation - Essex's pharmaceuticals company - were blessedly empty. Storm glanced both ways down the one outside the janitorial closet into which Nightcrawler had systematically teleported the infiltration team, one at a time.

"We're all in, Cypher."

"Roger that," came Doug's voice over the transmitter. "On your floor, we've got guards at the front desk and in the main security room. I've instituted a loop feed on their cameras that'll show your corridor empty to the elevator, as well as in the basement. Given the blueprints I pulled off their computers last night after I talked to Cyclops, the main labs are in the basement. There are five bogies below, plus some weekend personnel in the lab itself. You'll need to neutralize those guards and I'll work on access to the labs."

"Are there cameras inside there, too?" Nightcrawler asked.

"Not normal video. I could give you an image from the infrared, but like I said at the mansion, if you teleported in, your body heat would immediately set off the alarm system. We need someone who won't register a body temp above the room's ambient temperature, which is 73o Fahrenheit."

All eyes turned to Bobby, who nodded curtly. "I'm feeling well enough," he said. "Hank's got a thermometer, so I'll know when I've dropped my body to the right level before going in. But I'm going to need someone to tell me how to disable the alarm system."

"That's what I'm here for," Cypher replied. "As long as you see it, I can see it." In response, Bobby touched the special camera glasses he wore; they had red lenses and made him look a bit like Scott. "Now," Doug went on, "once your team has taken out the basement security, I can bypass the security card, but there's a handprint reader, too."

"Are the guards cleared to enter the lab?" Mystique asked. "I can mimic one."

"I can't tell from the data I have access to. Probably, but I can't guarantee it."

"We'll have to trust to luck."

"Roger that," Cypher replied.

"For now, we secure the basement," Storm said, pointing her team towards the elevator. She'd leave Cypher to work his magic in the van outside where he'd hacked into the lab's security systems by some electronic wizardry. "The system is actually closed," he'd said on the way there. "That's the only truly secure system anyway, so I have to gain access to it via transmitter."

"And you can do that?" Hank had asked, watching over Doug's shoulder.

"There's no system the Cypher can't break into," he'd replied with a small smile.

"The Cypher?" Storm had asked, and Doug had blushed.

"My, um, hacker name."

Storm had grinned. "Welcome to the X-Men, Cypher."

Now, as Storm and her team entered the elevator, she realized they couldn't access the basement without a key. "It has a security lock," she said into her transmitter.

"Working on it," Cypher replied. A minute later, the elevator jerked into motion. "Two guards are headed for the elevator," Cypher warned. "They must have an after-hours alert of some kind. No guns - they probably assume it's authorized personnel - but be ready."

The elevator halted and the doors parted. Mystique exploded out of them before Storm quite registered it, engaging one of the guards in a brief but brutal struggle even as Nightcrawler teleported atop the other, felling him with a swift kick to the head. Storm didn't have time to be amazed. "Three more to go," she said and Doug gave them locations. Storm, Mystique, and Nightcrawler headed off to secure the floor while Beast and Iceman waited near the lab entrance, Iceman readying himself to match the temperature inside the lab.

Storm found her guard and quickly knocked him out from behind, then trotted back towards the lab. Nightcrawler was already there, and Mystique, who glanced up. "Slowpoke," she said, and Storm didn't know if she were being teased in a friendly way or made fun of.

But Doug was speaking. "There are three lab techs or other personnel in there - two of them in a back room and the other near the refrigeration units. I don't know how silent it'll be, opening the door, but Iceman, duck right when you enter. I'll direct you to the main security panel and then walk you through disarming the sensors. Mystique, the card and palm print have to be done together. I've got the code, and on the count of three, I'll key it. Are you and Iceman ready?"

"Ready," both said together.

"Then three, two, one -"

The light on the access panel switched from red to green even as Mystique laid her morphed hand on the recognition panel and a white light - like a copy machine - scanned it.

The doors parted. "Iceman," Storm said, "You're on."

* * *

As feared, Cyclops, Angel, and Wolverine arrived at the Shaw mansion too late. Fire trucks and police already swarmed over the place, and the three men crouched in the woods just on the other side of the pulverized grounds wall. "Is Jean around?" Angel asked Cyclops, who turned his face down to the earth - concentrating. He'd worn a visor for the mission because, he said, he didn't have good enough control without it.

Now, he replied, "She's in there," and pointed towards the stables, which still stood. "I don't think she's really . . . aware."

"Whaddaya mean by that?" Wolverine asked.

Cyclops frowned. "I can't explain. I can sense her presence, but don't feel her thoughts at all. Like she's asleep. I think she can sense me, but it hasn't really registered."

Angel wasn't the least comforted by that assessment.

"We'll have to circle around," Wolverine was saying, "see if there's a rear entrance."

"There should be," Cyclops replied, "opening onto one of the yards." But in daylight, it'd be hard to reach the stable without being seen. "I wish I had Storm to lay some morning ground fog," Cyclops added.

"Everyone's up at the house," Wolverine said, watching the bustling anthill of activity at the ruined residence. "I bet they already searched the outbuildings. Follow me." And he headed left deeper into the wooded area; Angel leaned on Cyclops to follow. It took fifteen minutes of circling and a couple quick dashes before they'd reached the fence to one of the stable yards. Cyclops and Wolverine threw themselves over it, while Angel summoned enough strength to lift himself a few feet. Then they were in and made their way to a rear door with the bulk of the stable to shield them from the house.

The door had a padlock, but a quick, precise blast from Cyclops took care of that, and they let themselves into the barn. Inside, it was surprisingly quiet, considering. Horses stamped or blew out softly as morning light streamed in the open, sliding front doors. Angel and Wolverine let Cyclops take point.

He led them to an empty stall where Jean was curled into a fetal position, weeping, hay in her wild red hair, very much physical - and naked. "I killed them," she whispered over and over. "I killed them all." Seeing her broke Warren's heart and he extended a bedraggled wing across her body to cover her even as Scott was pulling off his uniform jacket and Wolverine looked around for a saddle blanket to drape across her lower body.

"Jean," Scott said while he covered her up, "we're here. You're safe."

She turned a tear-stained face towards them, her eyes opaque gold - no visible pupil. "You should stay away from me," she warned, but as a caution not a threat. "I don't want to hurt you, too." A pause. "I killed them all."

"Killed who?" Cyclops asked.

"Essex. Shaw. All the security and staff in the house. All the guards outside. Everyone."

Jaw tight, Cyclops pulled off his visor, turning to give Wolverine a significant glance. "She ever killed before?" Wolverine asked softly. Cyclops and Angel both shook their heads.

Coughing bloody spittle, Angel said, "Scott - let me talk to her."

Cyclops shifted slightly to let Angel forward into the stall with Jean. "What happened?" Warren asked her softly.

Instant agony squeezed his brain - the same he'd felt in Alaska upon first finding Jean. "Too fast," Cyclops gasped, and abruptly, the pressure ceased. Yet it left behind a palpable memory of what had occurred at the Shaw mansion. Angel, Cyclops, and Wolverine not only knew what Jean had done, but how it had felt to her victims. Warren might have been horrified, except he didn't think any of them deserved the sympathy.

Jean, however, clearly felt otherwise. "I killed them," she repeated now. "I'm a doctor - but I killed them. Horribly. And Essex didn't even tell me anything. I've nothing to show for any of it - no answer. I killed them, but Essex's virus is still killing us." She broke down into sobs, her hands over her face. "And I can't undo it."

There was a pause, like an indrawn breath, then Cyclops said, "No, maybe you _can_ -"

* * *

Hank waited impatiently outside the lab with the rest of the team, worried for the safety of the young man inside. Bobby's illness had given Hank a chance to get to know him better, and he liked him. What he didn't like was Bobby's inclusion (still sick!) on this very dangerous mission - especially sent in alone - even while he recognized the tactical necessity.

Abruptly, the doors parted and they all started, half fearing discovery, but Bobby stood framed in it. "We've disarmed the alarm. Well, Cypher did. I just cut the lines he told me to. It's safe to come in."

Hank rose together with Storm. Mystique, however, didn't. "Kurt and I will stay out here, to guard."

Storm didn't protest, and Hank followed her in, his insulated bags in one hand. "It will be better," Storm said softly, "if we can take the samples without alerting all the lab techs. There is one near the refrigerators, but the other two are in the back. Let us be as swift as possible."

"I can try," Hank replied, "but a lot will depend on how this lab labels things. Most use a numerical code. I doubt our samples will have 'vaccine for Legacy' penned on the side, and I'm not going to have time to run full PCRs - those take hours."

"Then take every vial in the refrigerators if you must," Storm replied.

"And carry them all?" Hank replied, but wasted no more words, heading instead to the side of the lab where Cypher had said the refrigerators stood, moving carefully to avoid being heard. His senses, like his agility, were somewhat sharper than human average, yet he detected nothing - no sound of movement. Perhaps whoever had been assigned here was dozing on the job?

Turning a corner, he saw why the person Doug had seen made no sound. It wasn't a lab tech. It was a lab rat - albeit decidedly not of the Muridae family.

The three of them approached the young man strapped to a table and apparently drugged into unconsciousness. He wasn't remarkable in either height or girth, and his hair was garden-variety brown, yet he had the same sharp, exceptional beauty as Scott. Hank couldn't guess whether he was a mutant, but it didn't matter. He was a prisoner.

"Help me free him," Storm said to Bobby. Hank might have stayed to help, but time was at a premium, so he headed for the refrigeration units, seeking the ultralow freezers, of which there were two small ones, about five cubic feet square. Nothing in the first looked promising, and he had to check quickly because if the temperature rose above -80o C, it would set off alarms. It wasn't until reaching the second - padlocked - that he found what he thought he might be looking for.

Having disposed of the padlock by a yank from superhuman strength, he found six double-stacked canisters, each containing eight vials of a hard-frozen, pale yellow-green substance. The labels on the canisters bore only a number - exactly the kind of coding Hank had feared - but given what Emma had told him, not to mention the secured freezer, he was fairly sure this was the vaccine. Just to be certain, however, he checked the remaining units. In another, he found a few blue-green samples, and a few more pale yellow with a slight green tinge, of which he took one each, to be on the safe side. He found nothing freeze-dried that seemed likely. Then he stored all the canisters he could fit into his insulated packs and returned to Storm and Iceman.

They carried the stranger, still out cold, between them. "I do not think he will wake any time soon," Storm said.

Hank handed both his packs to Bobby - "Keep them as cold as they are right now" - then got a hold of the man, throwing him (gently) over a shoulder. "I'll take him. Let's go."

"You found it?"

"I'm fairly certain, yes, assuming Emma's description can be trusted - and in this, I have no reason to doubt her."

Storm held his eyes a moment, then just nodded and gestured back towards the door.

Luck, however, did not let them escape without incident. One of the techs previously in back had come out into the main lab, and they blundered right into him as they headed out. He gasped in surprise, but Hank unloaded the stranger on Storm (who staggered under the unexpected weight) then vaulted a table to grab the man by the throat, lifting him off his feet and slamming him into a column. "We are looking for a certain vaccine," he said, motioning with one hand to Bobby, who came forward. "Open the pack, Iceman, and show this gentleman one of the canisters." Bobby did so. "Is this the cure for Legacy?"

The tech just blinked, then smiled slowly despite Hank's grip on his windpipe. 'Let me go,' he mouthed.

"Only if you promise not to scream. If you do, I shall crush your throat."

The other nodded, and Hank released him. The man rubbed his neck and said, "Uncharacteristically forceful, Dr. McCoy," then grinned again at Hank's obvious shock. "Oh, yes, I know who you are. I must congratulate you for getting past Dr. Essex's security."

"The vaccine?" Hank asked.

"That, I'm afraid I can't tell you." The smile deepened. "Non-disclosure forms and all that - I'm sure you understand."

Furious, Hank grabbed him again to slam him back into the column. "I don't give a damn about your non-disclosure forms. That virus is killing people!"

'Only the trash,' the other mouthed, and Hank had to remind himself he was a doctor, not an assassin.

"Who are you?" he demanded instead, letting up on the other's windpipe enough for him to talk.

"'Strife' will do - for you." And his arms, which Hank hadn't really been watching, jerked up suddenly, a syringe in one. This, he stabbed into Hank's chest.

Startled, Hank let him go and he fled immediately, back into the bowels of the lab. Storm might have followed, but for the man she held up. Hank jerked the syringe out and looked at it. He didn't think there'd been anything in it - one didn't usually carry around full syringes in one's pocket. Strife had meant only to distract him, and it had worked. He didn't have time to worry about it, in any case; he'd test the syringe at the medlab later. Turning to Storm, he said, "We must get all these samples back to the mansion immediately, before they spoil."

* * *

Getting out of the building didn't prove to be quite as easy as getting in. Somehow, the guards had been alerted - where was Ramsey? - and were waiting just outside the elevator. It was, Mystique thought, a good thing she'd been trained for just this sort of eventuality. The X-types were mostly useless, as they refused to use lethal force, even if they weren't dragging along a flatscan as encumbrance. At least the Weather Witch finally got her head out of her ass long enough to call the lightning and fry all the electronics in the building. That would, of course, set off alarms elsewhere, but they should be long gone by then, and it left the lab security working blind. Mystique and her fellows made a break for it out an emergency exit.

When they reached the van, they discovered what had happened to Cypher. Their surveillance had been compromised and the van shot up, though the doors were all still locked - crushed closed by the boy now down on his ass against a rear wheel and back in his flesh-form. He didn't look good at all, blood leaking from nose, ears, eyes and mouth. Not damage from the fight - he'd moved into the final stages of Legacy, and without a transfusion, Mystique didn't know if he'd make it back to the mansion.

At least Cypher was safe. They found their little tech genius on the van floor, back pressed to one of the banks of ruined computers, a shaking .45 pointed at Mystique as she climbed behind the wheel. Ramsey was breathing hard and she smiled at him, kicking the gun from his grip. "Put that down; you might actually hit something with it." Then she got out again so the others could enter through the front. (Those rear doors wouldn't open without a blow-torch, and they'd needed a crowbar just to get into the driver's side. Mystique would have to drive with one hand holding the jimmied door shut.)

Storm and Bobby hurried in with their flatscan guest while Nightcrawler teleported first the steel boy then the good doctor inside. Mystique had the van moving before McCoy could sit down and examine the kid. She heard Cypher say, "He saved my life," as McCoy told the boy, "Just half an hour, Pete. Hang on for half an hour and we'll have you home."

"For all the good that'll do," Mystique muttered under her breath as she maneuvered their trashed vehicle out of the commercial-industrial neighborhood of Hempstead, Long Island, and hoped they passed no cops on the highway headed north. They were hardly inconspicuous with the sides full of bullet holes and a crunched rear end, but leaving behind a registered vehicle to be found by cops hadn't been an option, even if they could steal another ride for their extraction. She was simply glad the engine and tires had remained in one piece.

* * *

"You think you can do _what_?" Wolverine asked, because he was sure he couldn't have heard correctly what Summers had just proposed.

"I can travel through time. I think. If what Essex said is right."

Winged Boy was staring at Summers with equal disbelief, so it wasn't just Wolverine. "Since _when_?" the other man asked.

"Essex told Jean something when he met with her. He said we'd produce children with her powers and mine - telepathic telekinetics who could also time travel. That last isn't Jean's power, and I've been thinking about it ever since. Sometimes, in the past, I've seemed to . . . know things . . . before they happened. I never put any stock in it, but -"

Summers looked at Jean, who was still huddled like a child in the stall. Yet there was something new in her face - a vague hope. "Do you really think you could?"

He knelt down in front of her and took her hands. "I don't know. You tell me. You fixed my head. What's in there, Jean?"

She shut her eyes a moment, then opened them again. "I'm not sure . . . but I may be able to help you find out.

"We'd better hurry," Logan warned them, eyes on the mansion in the distance, visible through the open front stable doors.

"If this actually works," Summers said, "we have all the time in the world."

* * *

Hank had stored a jump bag in the van, and now got a saline drip going for Piotr, along with a shot of adrenaline, even as Mystique maneuvered the van (somewhat wildly) through city traffic. Hank doubted there was much to be done for the boy at this point, but wasn't inclined to call it quits, and he wanted to give Piotr's family a chance to say goodbye, at least.

Piotr drifted in and out of consciousness. At one point, he asked, "Did we get the vaccine?"

"Yes, we did," Hank told him. "Six canisters of it. With that, we'll be able to inoculate everyone uninfected at the mansion and still have plenty to submit to the CDC to start the approval process through the FDA."

"How long will that take?" Piotr asked.

"I don't know." Hank frowned. "With an epidemic threatening, they might work a little faster."

Pete's face twisted, "They won't hurry; it's just killing us mutants, not them."

Hank didn't like the unconscious division. "It's killing human beings, Pete; mutant or not doesn't matter. We're doctors. We heal the sick. I don't limit myself only to mutants, and non-mutant doctors - the ones with any kind of conscience - don't limit themselves to non-mutants. I'll push this through the FDA as fast as possible if I have to drop-kick it . . . and I know some good people in Atlanta who'll help."

"Speaking of non-mutants," Storm broke in, "I think our guest may be waking." She nodded to the stranger they'd rescued from Essex's lab. He was stirring, and Hank left Pete to be watched over by Bobby and a well-wrapped Doug, and approached the stranger, propping him up gently.

"Are you with us, sir?"

The stranger opened his eyes.

And that settled any question of whether he was a mutant. What should have been a white sclera showed coal black instead, and the irises were a scarlet far brighter than one would find in an albino, which this young man certainly wasn't.

"Who are you?" Storm asked him.

He flicked his peculiar eyes in her direction and spoke in a strange, clipped English with odd accents. "Who're _you_, pretty woman?"

Storm flushed. "My name is Ororo Munroe. We rescued you from Grail Corporation - Nathaniel Essex's lab."

At Essex's name, the stranger frowned and said something in what sounded to Hank like bastardized French. Then, in English, he said, "Thank you for that. And my name's Remy LeBeau."

"How did you wind up in the clutches of Essex?" Hank asked.

"Long story." Remy sagged back against the side of one ruined computer. "Can I tell y'all later when we get down from the car?"

"Certainly. For now, rest."

And Hank made his way back to Pete's side; in an undertone, he asked Doug, "Was that French?"

"Very poor Cajun French," Doug corrected in an equally low voice, then added, laughing a little, "He's got quite a colorful vocabulary."

* * *

"Most mutants," Jean said as she and Scott knelt facing each other in the stall, Warren and Logan looking on, "are born with an instinctive base command of their powers. They usually can't control it well yet, but they know how to use it." She raised her hands to the sides of Scott's face, more to reassure him than because she needed the physical contact now. "I'm not sure you'll be able to control your time walking. You might come out five minutes in the past - or five days . . . or five _years_. You can move forward again, too, but it'll take time, to master it."

"The advantage," Scott said, "is that even if it takes me days, it'll be only seconds to you."

She nodded, rubbing the heel of her palm down one leg of the slacks she'd made for herself once conscious enough to do so. "Even after you master moving through time, I'm not sure you'll be able to take anyone with you." She glanced at Warren and Logan - neither of whom looked happy at that supposition. "Kurt told me he's been able to teleport since he was a young teen, but only recently learned to teleport others, and remember how long it took Kitty to phase anything besides herself?"

Reaching out, Scott grabbed a handful of hay. "We'll see if this comes with me."

"Just hope your _clothes_ go with you," Logan said.

Scott ignored him, nodding to Jean and smiling a little. "I'm ready."

Bending to kiss him once on the lips, Jean wiggled her mind into his to help him trigger the secondary mutation he'd never before been able to use.

And he disappeared.

So did the hay he'd been holding. And his clothes. "That answers that," she said.

"Now what do we do?" Logan asked.

"We wait," she replied, turning to look at both remaining men. "He said he'd come back before confronting my . . . phoenix form." She hugged herself and squeezed her eyes shut. Working with Scott had helped her push the memories away momentarily, but now they were back in vivid detail.

She felt Warren's wings enclose her, and smiled without opening her eyes. This might be as close as she ever got, now, to the touch of an angel.

* * *

**Note:** On Cyclops' time-walking abilities, it's derived from the comic where his and Jean's (genetic) children - most particularly Rachel and Cable - do, indeed, have the powers that Essex attributed to them, if somewhat less finely honed. The time-walking comes from their father, not their mother. There are a few times in the comics when Scott had premonitions in the form of dreams, though it was used irregularly by writers and seems to have been dropped entirely of late. This secondary mutation functioned even less completely due to brain damage, though he passed it on to his children. If his brain were, in fact, healed, then both mutations would once again function correctly.

Remy is for Katt. ;) I didn't originally intend to include him, but he showed up on my mental doorstep and demanded to be admitted to the story. I did a little checking and most modern Cajuns have very poor to no French, with only a splattering of foreign words and some French grammar patterns retained. As with Rogue's Southern accent, I prefer to use grammar to indicate dialect rather than misspellings. Thanks to Domenika for the suggestion of Hempstead.


	38. Personal Journal: Time Walking

_**From Scott Summers' Personal Journal:**_

I could say that walking through time is like falling into a book while the pages are flipping, or like navigating a house of mirrors - but both are prosaic and predictable . . . and not terribly accurate. It's simply not like anything. If you can imagine being nowhen and everywhen at once, that's what it's like. And why it was hard to learn to control. I just had no analog.

Fortunately, I'd come into this power prepared, and could only imagine how confusing and frightening it might have been if I'd stumbled onto it by accident as a teen. Although in the case of that long ago encounter with Jack O'Diamonds, it might have been more useful - not to mention less messy - than blasting him to pieces.

My first attempt to move back in time was less than exemplary. I'm not exactly certain when I landed, but I think pre-Columbian New England. I don't know, either, how long it took me to get the hang of what I was doing. Time was meaningless. It was long enough to grow hungry and have to steal food, and to take a piss or three. I needed sleep, as well, but felt too agitated to do more than nap for a few hours on two separate occasions.

I also discovered that I moved through time only, not space - at least, not space yet. Whenever I popped out of my tesseract - or whatever you'd call the alternate dimension I was in - I landed on the same spot. But I couldn't pop out if that spot were occupied by something else, such as a horse - or earlier, a tree. It was as if the door were closed.

Imperfect though my mastery was, I finally felt able to get myself to the right time - just before sunrise on August 12th, 2006.

But that left me with a dilemma. Should I return to the three waiting for me in Shaw's barn, or simply go on to intercept the Phoenix? If I returned, I'd have to argue with them about coming with me; facing Jean at full power and without inhibition would be dangerous, to say the least. But if I didn't return, faced the Phoenix and lost my gamble, they wouldn't know for sure what had happened.

I finally opted to return, as much because I'd said I would as for any other reason. "Scott!" Jean cried, embracing me upon my materializing and sounding immensely relieved. She looked better than she had when I'd left, no longer so deeply in shock, perhaps as a result of the opportunity to undo the horror she'd committed. If I could go back and undo some of the things in my past . . . .

But, of course, now, I _could_. Adult Scott could return to warn Major Christopher Summers not to take that fatal plane flight.

Yet if I did that, how many other things would change? Some people might still be alive, such as Jack O'Diamonds. But others wouldn't - perhaps Ororo among them, not to mention kids I'd saved since - and Warren himself. What would've happened to Warren all those years ago without Hank and I to intervene?

As much as I wished I could save my parents, there was just too much water under the bridge - and I understood the real danger of this power. Like Xavier and Jean's telepathy, it came with an enormous responsibility not to misuse it.

Yet Nathaniel Essex had wanted to breed a race of mutants who could time-walk? Was he insane? If a child of Jean and I really would have her almost unlimited telekinetic and telepathic power _and_ my time walking . . . maybe we should never have any. Could a person (much less a teenager) refuse the temptation of such incredible power? Like unto gods, to quote _Genesis_.

Turning to face Warren and Logan with my arm still around Jean, I said bluntly, "I can't take all of you. I'm not even sure I can take _one_ of you. Timeporting hay's a bit different from a person. I could scatter you in bits and pieces across dimensions."

"Then take me," Warren said immediately. "If it doesn't work, it won't matter. I'm dying anyway." I could have predicted that response.

But to my surprise, Jean also protested, "No - take me. I can stop her." Then she shook her head. "I mean, stop myself."

Logan didn't say anything. Perhaps he realized that if the choice were down to one, his name wasn't first on the list.

So I looked between Jean's earnest face, and Warren's - and it struck me that this wasn't a one-person job, or even a two-person job. It would take three, and I held out a hand to both. They knew the risks; I wouldn't insult them by protecting them from their own choices, and I was glad, now, that I'd come back.

They accepted my proffered hands, then took each other's. "Here we go," I said. "It'll feel a little weird." And I . . . yanked, pulling them after me into my time tesseract. I could feel them with me as I moved backwards just a little - backwards to sunrise that same morning.

We came out to the sound of someone moving in the main barn aisle beyond, and crouched down together. Fortunately, the empty stall door was closed, and we waited until the unseen attendant had finished giving the horses their morning feed and retreated to the tack room. Then we hurried out.

Already on the property, we didn't have to worry about getting past the gate, but the grounds themselves were still patrolled. With Jean, evading security was easy. We reached the front drive circle around the main fountain, whose water glittered in the early morning light.

"I can feel her coming," Jean whispered, and turned towards the gate beyond the long driveway. She reached out to grab my hand and Warren's in each of hers. Then she . . . ignited - awesome wings of flame extending from her back to match Warren's, but much larger, and she _grew_, up, up, enveloping us in the nimbus of her power until she was as high as the mansion behind us. Yet her flames didn't burn; she shielded us from her full majesty, and her potential destruction. I felt only warmth.

Together, we three made our stand.


	39. Grail

There is ever, only one phoenix.

She's barren except in death, and dies in excruciating agony, her flamelike plumage consumed by fire. Then and only then is she reborn from the ashes of herself - without mother or father, without kith or kin, without mate. She is alone. Death and life and death - she is the release of the spirit from earth's bondage, and she rises in glory. Percival's purity, guardian of the Grail, herald of the New Age. Her blood burns, her tears heal, yet she's always solitary in her splendor.

There is ever, only one phoenix.

Except now, there were two.

The One Coming felt the One Waiting and marveled even as she hesitated, unsure what this meeting of dopplegangers might portend. The One Waiting stood between her and her objective - Sebastian Shaw and Nathaniel Essex, the architects of her people's destruction, the ones from whom she must save those weaker than she.

**HAVE YOU COME TO AID ME? **the One Coming asked, pausing there in the middle of the murderer's grand drive, finely manicured lawns stretching obscenely to either side, ripe with summer life while her people died in tens and twenties every day.

For just an instant, the One Coming had the impression that the One Waiting meant to say, 'I've come to stop you' - and then there would be a battle - but she didn't. Instead, she said,_** We've Come to show you what will happen if you continue. It isn't what you hope.**_

* * *

Mystique was still driving like a bat out of hell when somewhere just north of Brooklyn, Beast - who'd been checking Piotr's blood pressure again - suddenly stiffened and collapsed, then began seizing. This wasn't the virus, Storm was fairly sure of that. The progression of the disease had been well documented even in this brief a time, and no one had shown symptoms like these.

Storm and Nightcrawler leapt on his upper body to hold him down and keep him from swallowing his tongue. Colossus, who might have done it more easily, was too far gone, and Iceman too weak to help - and Cypher too vulnerable. Rather to Storm's surprise, though, the stranger named Remy LeBeau waded in to grab Hank's feet. "Be careful!" Storm told him. "He is infected by Legacy."

"So was I, _cher_. Infected and over it more'n a month ago, me."

He had already recovered? Storm thought Hank would be pleased by that when he recovered from this . . . whatever it was. There would be one more person besides Logan to supply blood for serum therapy - assuming Remy would agree. But given his unasked for assistance just now, Storm thought he might be inclined to help if he could.

"He an epileptic?" Remy asked now.

"I do not know," Storm replied. "I did not think so, but I could be wrong." Beast's struggles were weakening and he was falling unconsciousness, just as an epileptic might after a grand mal seizure. She looked down at him, baffled. "I have no idea what has caused this."

"Maybe it's from whatever that guy had in his syringe."

Storm glanced up at Iceman, who'd spoken, sitting off to the side, arms wrapped around his knees. "What syringe?" she asked.

"Didn't you see? That lab tech we caught - he stabbed Hank with a syringe, to get free."

"Oh, yes." She'd momentarily forgotten.

"What lab tech?" Remy asked.

"He called himself 'Strife.' I assume that is not his real name," Storm added dryly.

Remy hawked and spit in disgust. "That sonnabitch. Real name's Nate Askani, calls himself Stryfe as a joke - claims Essex his dad. Dunno if it's true, but he's got the gumbo, for sure. Like father, like son, I guess. Got no idea what he shot up your doc with, but they were doing experiments on mutants."

Storm studied Remy. "Is that why you were there?"

"Had 'good genes,' Essex said, or some bullshit like that." He paused to look down at Hank's now-slack face, then Storm saw his eyes widen. "Holy Mother o' God -"

Storm glanced down herself to see what had startled him so.

Hank was turning _blue_. All over his face and hands and the other exposed skin that she could see, small, fine hairs had appeared . . . and they were cobalt blue.

Thus, by the time Storm's team reached the mansion, she had not one, but two men down, and unfortunately, one of them was the only person there able to check the vaccine and administer it.

_Professor,_ she sent mentally, even as Mystique turned onto Greymalkin Lane - hoping Xavier was well enough and able to hear her - _We need Jean, and we need her_ now_._

* * *

_**We've come to show you what will happen if you continue,**_ said the One Waiting. _**It isn't what you hope.**_

**HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT I HOPE?**

_**I am you - was you, just a few hours ago.**_

**I MUST SAVE HIM. MUST SAVE ALL OF THEM.**

_**But you can't - not like this. He doesn't want you to do this.**_

**HOW COULD YOU KNOW?**

There was a pause, then the One Waiting lifted a fiery pinion to reveal a smaller, more human angel with ragged wings and a sad, fever-flushed face. _**WARREN . . . **_breathed the One Coming as an ache seized and shook her.

"You can't save me," he told her between fits of coughing. "But I can save you. If you do this, Jean, you'll regret it for the rest of your life."

The One Coming raised her head, opened her beak, and cried out to the heavens in anguish. ** THE ONES RESPONSIBLE ARE THE ONES WHO WILL REGRET IT.**

"But what difference will killing them make?" Warren replied. "I don't want you to kill for me. Please. That isn't what I need on my conscience before I die. If you truly love me, you won't kill them."

So small and weak, but so precious. The One Coming felt her heart breaking. **I WILL TAKE WHAT I NEED TO KNOW. TO SAVE YOU.**

And the One Waiting lifted her other wing so that a second figure stepped out. "It won't work. You tried that - which is why we're here. You tried, but you only killed them. You're a doctor, Jean. You heal - you don't kill."

**BUT IF I CAN'T HEAL, THEN I SHALL KILL THE CULPRITS.**

"Why?" Scott persisted. "Killing them won't change anything. I killed the one who hurt me, but I didn't _feel_ any better. Revenge isn't sweet. Try to _remember_, Jean - remember who you are. _Doctor_ Jean Grey, healer and substitute mother to a house full of homeless kids. You're not a killer. I _know_ you. You'll regret it."

But the One Coming didn't want to hear. She raised her wings to fan them, singeing the grass and bushes all around. **GET OUT OF THE WAY AND LET ME PASS. LET ME DO WHAT I CAME TO DO.**

_**No,**_ said the One Waiting as quietly as she was able.

And before the One Coming could block it, the One Waiting thrust her memories at her. The One Coming screamed in fury, and despair. Words could be bandied, deflected, ignored, or discredited, but memories were inescapable. She saw what she could do . . . what she would do. And for nothing.

Screaming again at the sky, the One Coming collapsed in on herself, returning to her mortal shell. Immediately, the One Waiting disappeared with the two men.

Jean Grey lay naked and weeping on the empty mansion driveway.

There was no solution, no way to evade the inevitable. Lost and desperate, she rose to her knees, then launched herself straight up into the sky. After some time, hovering alone above the bright curve of the earth and looking down on blue and white, green and brown, her mentor found her. _Jean, come home. We have need of you. Henry and Ororo have successfully stolen the vaccine, but Hank was injured and we need you to administer it._

* * *

Rogue's first impression of Remy LeBeau was mixed. As the only remaining (healthy) X-Man at the mansion - however junior - the professor had telepathically asked her to keep an eye on things for a few hours. So when Storm's team returned with a dying Colossus and an injured Beast, she was asked to take charge of the unplanned-for guest.

_Please see Mr. LeBeau to a room on the third floor,_ the professor sent to her. _And Rogue, keep an eye on him. Mr. LeBeau - like Logan - may have a good heart beneath, but his fingers are a bit . . . sticky._

"S'that really a Ming-Era vase?" LeBeau asked as Rogue showed him around the first floor. He'd paused to stare at a green-glazed double-dragon vase sitting proudly on a three-foot plinth.

Amused and with the professor's warning in mind, she turned to eye him. "You know your art - for a Cajun."

His head swung so he could eye her in return; he really was a pretty man. A little too pretty. "Just because I'm from the bayou don't make me uneducated, Ms. . . ."

"Rogue. Just Rogue."

"_Ms. _Rogue. I studied art history at Tulane."

"Well, did you, now?"

He grinned. "The Far East wasn't my era, but I recognize old pottery glaze styles - and Chinese work."

"And do you recognize a replica? 'Cause that's what that is. The professor don't leave out the real stuff."

"Afraid one of the students might make off with the silver?" He grinned, the cocky bastard.

"More like he's afraid they might accidentally blast it to smithereens. In a house full of teenagers - and mutants - you don't leave out anything that costs a couple thousand where someone might knock it over, y'know?"

The grin widened and he gave her a little bow. "I don't suppose you'd know where I could find a pair of sunglasses, me? Essex confiscated my Ray Bans when he took me."

She blinked. His phrasing threw her now and then. There were many dialects in the South - something most people not _from_ the South didn't appreciate - but she'd never talked to anyone from the Louisiana coast before. "I could loan you a pair of mine," she replied. "But if you're worried about your eyes - don't be. You don't got to hide anything here. We're all mutants. Nobody'll laugh."

"My eye!"

She just blinked. "Your eye? Nobody will laugh at your eyes - honest."

And abruptly, _he_ laughed. "No! It's just a sayin', _ma chère_. It means you're pulling my leg."

And she smiled back, unable to help herself. "Nope, not a bit. I mean, you already met _Herr_ Wagner."

"Indeed, I did. He's quite something, and nice to know there's another member of Mother Church around here, too." His grin didn't fade one whit. "So where'm I to stay in this fair castle?"

"Follow me." And as they walked on, she asked, to make small talk, "So, how'd a Southern boy like you come to cold New York?"

"After Hurricane Katrina . . . ."

* * *

Much to their surprise, when Cyclops, Angel, and Wolverine arrived at the Shaw mansion, everything appeared to be normal. The three men crouched in the woods just on the other side of the grounds wall. "Is Jean around?" Angel asked Cyclops, who turned his face down to the earth - concentrating. He'd worn a visor for the mission because, he said, he didn't have good enough control without it.

"I . . . yes. But not here. I can't tell where she is. Or rather, where she is makes no sense."

Wolverine turned to look at the younger man. "What're you talking about?"

Summers looked straight up, turning his hand slightly so that his index finger pointed at the sky. Wolverine blinked. Summers was right. That made no damn sense. "You're sayin' she's hovering somewhere above us?"

Summers just shrugged. "That's where I feel her. The link - it's like compass. And she's . . . ." He trailed off and pointed subtly upward again.

Worthington was eyeing the sky, wings quivering. "I might be able to find her," he said, then coughed.

"You ain't going nowhere, kid," Wolverine told him. "You can barely walk a straight line. What makes you think you can fly in one?"

"We need to find her."

"No shit." But Wolverine was looking at Summers, who'd pulled off his visor. His eyes were shut, his lips pursed, concentrating. He had to be trying to find her telepathically.

After a moment, he opened his eyes. "She's not listening to me," he said.

"So what do we do now?" Angel asked, obviously frustrated. "Just go meekly back to the mansion and wait for her to do something besides hover up there?"

Summers shook his head. "We stay here - in case she comes back and tries to get to Shaw."

Wolverine twisted to glance up at the high wall with its electric fence at the top. He wondered if the stone beneath was also wired, or if he could put his claws through it? Waiting wasn't something he did well, but for now, it didn't look as if they had much choice.

So they waited. Wolverine hadn't worn a watch, so he had no idea how long they were there. They'd picked a spot safe from security cameras; they'd be spotted only if they tried to enter the grounds. So Wolverine paced and Cyclops kept vigil over Angel, who visibly worsened even as he sat there beneath an oak. The kid sounded ready to cough up a lung, but wasn't strong enough to do so. Once, he suffered a bad case of dry heaves that brought up nothing more than a bit of bloody fluid that dotted the dirt and fallen leaves. Another time, he barely got his pants down in time to avoid shitting himself. Summers helped him clean up (seemed to have come prepared for that eventuality, in fact), and ignored Winged Boy's humiliated apologies. Wolverine had made himself scarce to give the kid what dignity he could, but his ears were still good enough to bring him the sound of Summers and Worthington's voices. Wolverine didn't know how long Cyclops planned to stay out here, but if they didn't get Angel back, he wasn't going to last till noon. The iron smell of blood was strong in the air, along with the sweet stink of a bad illness.

When it sounded like Cyclops was finished cleaning up, Wolverine moseyed back and waved over the younger man, who rose from where he knelt by Angel. "We can't wait here much longer," Wolverine warned in a low voice. "We need to get him back - let Hank get some morphine into him."

Summers' face was a study in frustrated anger, pain, and simple grief. He'd been crying. "If we go back now, he'll have accomplished nothing. He'll die with nothing." Summers looked up and glared at Logan. His blue eyes were bright. "Don't you understand?"

"I understand. I also know he can't even stand up right now, Cyclops. He'll be unconscious soon."

Summers opened his mouth to reply, but a brilliant gold flash interrupted and made both men blink, hands raised to fend off the brightness. It was Jean in the raw - her real self, unmediated - and she awed Wolverine despite everything he'd seen in his life. By contrast, Summers seemed neither afraid nor surprised, and stepped forward straight into the glow that Jean-not-Jean threw off. His eyes were closed and his hair lifted slightly. Then, abruptly, the light went out and Jean-not-Jean was gone. Even though it was mid-morning, the woods seemed like twilight, and Summers shook his head. "It's time to go back," he said. "We stopped her."

"We did?" Wolverine asked, confused. "I coulda sworn we didn't move from this spot."

Cyclops put his visor back on. "That's how we know we stopped her." Wolverine just blinked. "Come on," Cyclops said. "Help me get Angel back to the car. I'll explain on the drive home." Then he knelt by his friend, who was slumped, eyes shut, either unconscious finally or dozing. He shook Angel lightly, and said, "We did it. You, me, and Jean - we did it. We stopped her. She hasn't killed anyone."

Slowly, Angel opened his eyes. Wolverine could see they were filmed over with a little blood, but Worthington smiled all the same. "Then I can rest," he croaked.

"You can rest," Scott told him.

* * *

As quick as thought, the Phoenix returned to Westchester and assessed the state of things. Feeling her consciousness, the professor smiled softly in his room, and whispered, "Welcome home, Jean." She brushed over him with a gentle touch of mental acknowledgment and moved on.

Piotr had been rushed back into his exam room, made ready to receive him for the final stages of his illness. His mother was waiting, along with Kitty Pryde. His father was on the way in from the city, though he would probably arrive too late. Edna worked over the boy, injecting him with morphine to lessen the pain and make him as comfortable as possible, though where she really wanted to be was out in the main medlab with her own son.

Hank lay on an exam table there, still unconscious. He was completely covered in a coat of lapis-blue fur, but it wasn't just the fur that marked a change. His whole frame had altered slightly - shoulders widening, arms lengthening, and legs shortening. His skeleton now resembled _homo erectus_, or perhaps _homo sapiens neanderthalis_. In any case, he was no longer built the way he had been. It was also evident that he wasn't waking up. A brief pass of her power over him told her that his body had gone into physical hibernation while it adjusted to these new changes thrust on it. She could detect in his system vestiges of the drug that had triggered his full mutation, yet it _was_ a mutation - not something 'wrong' - and Jean didn't think she could (or should) reverse it. This was what nature had meant Hank to be, all along.

But it left them with a problem. If the vaccine had been carried in by Bobby and Doug to be stashed in the lab's ultralow fridge, no one knew what to do with it next - even Edna, who was needed to care for the dying, in any case. Doug sat at Hank's computer, clicking through files, hoping to find something useful, while Ororo bent over his shoulder watching, hopeful.

Jean materialized directly in front of them - or partially materialized. She was having a hard time holding her mortal form now. _**"Perhaps I can help,"**_ she said, and they both jumped, mouths dropping open. Aside from the unconscious Hank, they were the only ones in the room - everyone else being either upstairs or in one of the rooms. _**"Ro, you should go lie down,"**_ Jean told her friend.

"I will manage," Ororo responded, obviously unsure about what to think of Jean right now.

Jean sifted her mind for an account of all that had happened at Essex's lab, and had to admire them. They'd done what she, in all her power and uncontrolled fury, had been unable to accomplish. They had the vaccine.

Without further comment, Jean turned to the freezer, opened it with a flick of her wrist, and called one of the canisters to her. Popping the lid, she floated out a vial, which hung suspended in front of her face. The fluorescent lights of the medbay turned it a shade of frozen limon.

"We're not entirely sure that _is_ the vaccine," Doug said. "Hank talked about running some tests, but, well . . . ." he trailed off and gestured helplessly to Hank's unconscious form.

In her current state, however, Jean found it easy to see not just with normal eyes, but down to the molecular pattern itself - how the vaccine had been created from the Legacy virus. _**"This is the vaccine,"**_ she assured them.

"How can you know for certain - ?" But he stopped abruptly when she turned to look at him. He appeared terrified, and she wondered what she must look like right now.

_**"Don't fear me,"**_ she said gently. _**"I mean no one any harm - just the opposite."**_

Now that she knew how the retrovirus had been made . . . she extended a fire hand, palm up, materializing a second vial exactly like the first. _**"I can make as much as we require. Or -"**_

She tilted her head, birdlike. If she understood well enough how the vaccine worked so that she could duplicate it, why couldn't she just create an immune response in the human body without bothering to inoculate in the first place?

She crossed the floor to where Doug sat at the computer. _**"Stand." **_Baffled, and still cautious, he did so. He might have feared men with big guns - for good reason - but he wasn't a coward. She placed her hand in the center of his chest and _looked_ into his body, into his blood and lymph nodes, stimulating the lymphocytes that produced the right antibodies and killer T cells that would specifically target the Legacy antigens. It took only seconds, then she pulled back her hand and met his eyes. _**"You're immunized."**_

He blinked at her. So did Ororo. "Just like that?" he asked.

_**"Just like that." **_She turned then to Ororo. _**"May I?" **_Ororo had known her longer, but like Scott, was less trusting generally. Now, though, she nodded, and Jean laid her hand in the center of Ro's chest in turn. Jean could sense the virus multiplying, replicating itself; it wasn't yet strong enough (thanks to Logan's antibodies) to do serious bodily damage, but it was there.

Invigorating Ororo's own immune responses was but a small effort for Jean, though she heard Ro gasp out, "Hot!" Much more energy was needed to kill the virus than simply to protect against it, and if Jean couldn't alter the basic energy-to-heat effect, she could make Ro feel it less.

_**"Better now?"**_ she asked as she adjusted what Ororo's nervous system sensed and repaired some of the tissue damage even while the antibodies went after the last of the virus, effecting in only moments what would normally have taken days.

"Better," Ororo agreed, eyes wide. "I feel -"

_**"You feel tired. You need to go sit down and drink some orange juice. Your body just did a lot of work. I helped, but it still did the work. You're well now, though."**_

Ro blinked twice, then managed, "Thank you," as Doug settled her down into the chair he'd pulled around for her.

"I'll get her the juice," he said.

_**"Get some for yourself, as well,"**_ Jean instructed. _**"Your body also did work, if not as much. It needs to have its energy replenished."**_

She turned away, towards the exam room where a young man lay dying. If she could kill the virus in Ororo, she could kill it in Piotr, too, regardless of his X-gene generation. The question was whether he could be pulled back from the edge of death, or would the damage inflicted on his body prove to be too great?

* * *

When Jean (could this creature of air and light still be called 'Jean'?) had drifted away, Ororo glanced up at Doug, who handed her a bottle of orange juice. She felt exhausted, as if she'd just run a marathon. She supposed she had, in a way. She drank her juice without comment, but when the bottle was empty, she looked again at Doug, who'd sat down, as if stunned. He was watching the bright red-gold light that spilled out the open doorway of Piotr's room. "What is she?" he asked.

"As I believe the saying goes, 'Your guess is as good as mine.'"

"Am I really immunized? Just like that?" He seemed dubious.

"It would probably be prudent to verify it with tests, but -"

She broke off as Kurt appeared suddenly beside them in a puff of indigo sulfuric smoke. "_Dem Fräulein Doktor?_" he asked, yellow eyes wide, tail lashing.

Ororo just nodded toward's Piotr's room. "Is there something she can do, perhaps?" Kurt asked, hopeful. Ororo noticed that his ever-present rosary was in his hand, his odd fingers worrying it nervously.

Doug pointed to the open canister, now safely deposited on a lab table. "She just stared at the vaccine for a minute, then immunized me and cured Ro with a touch of her hand on our chests. So yeah, I think maybe there's something she can do."

"Let us pray it is so," Kurt said, gripping the rosary, and Ororo reached over to close her hand over his. He shot her a shy smile, and laid his other over it.

Ororo barely noticed when Doug rose and drifted off.

* * *

Kitty had been only dimly aware of the bright light in the outer medbay; all her attention was focused on the pale, unmoving figure in the bed. He'd lost so much blood, his skin looked like parchment, and Mrs. McCoy had said that his internal organs were shutting down - his liver, his pancreas, his kidneys . . . eventually his heart and lungs, and Kitty knew it wouldn't be long now, for Pete. She'd never before sat a deathwatch; her grandparents had died when she wasn't present. She gripped one of his hands in her gloved one, and his mother held his other. They didn't talk; there was nothing to say except an occasional comment on some slight change. Piotr was unconscious now, and Kitty could almost see his life draining out of him. Could a person die by degrees?

Suddenly the bright light filled door, and Kitty looked up in surprise.

The light was a . . . person. Sort of. And she had the shape of Dr. Grey. Well, if Dr. Grey were a hologram and had multiple wings of flame. She reminded Kitty of nothing so much as the tales of God's seraphim that she'd heard in synagogue as a girl. As if in agreement, Mrs. Rasputin whispered, "An angel . . . ." from the other side of the bed.

The light came into the room, and smiled. Or Kitty thought she was smiling. _**"Not an angel,"**_ she said. The voice was female, but it resonated, filling up the space. _**"Just a doctor. Kitty, can I move in there beside him, please?"**_

Kitty scrambled out of her chair to make room, unsure if she should be afraid, or in awe. Dr. Grey . . . _drifted_ . . . forward to lay hands of fire and light on Piotr's chest, bending her head near to his as if breathing into his mouth. Or weeping maybe. Kitty saw fire tears fall on his face and slide down the pale-pale skin without burning it.

For a few moments, nothing happened. Then, abruptly, Piotr's body arched on the bed and he gasped out.

Dr. Grey moved back. _**"He'll be okay now, I think. I've helped his body kill the virus, repaired most of the tissue damage, and replenished some of the blood he's lost, but he'll be in critical condition for a while yet. We came very close to losing him."**_

And it was so odd to hear this seraphim creature talk just like Dr. Grey would have, using medical terms instead of the language of miracles - but wasn't that what she'd accomplished here? A miracle? Kitty was crying; so was Mrs. Rasputin.

Dr. Grey paused before leaving, and her fire hand felt like a breathy kiss cupping Kitty's cheek. _**"Don't cry. He'll be all right. With a brave heart like his, he'll be up and around in no time."**_

"I'm just . . . Thank you," Kitty told her. "Thank you so much."

_**"I'm just doing what I was made for, trained for - what I was meant to be. Now, I must go. I have another to save."**_

* * *

Jean had sensed the car bearing Scott, Logan, and Warren as it had neared Salem Center, but she'd been with Piotr. Now that Piotr was back from the precipice, though, she lost no time in flying to the one who needed her perhaps even more.

Yet when she appeared in the middle of I-684 just west of the hamlet, Logan swerved in surprise and nearly wrecked the car. She stopped it from skidding off the road. "Are you crazy?" Logan bellowed, opening his door. "Popping out of nowhere like that? We gotta get the kid back to the mansion."

_**"That won't be necessary,"**_ she told him, coming to the car's side and opening the rear door to peer in where Scott held Warren sprawled inelegantly across his lap. Scott's clothes were soaked with blood and other body fluids, and his face looked shell-shocked, his eyes hopeless - too grief-stricken even to weep.

"He's already dead," he said, voice flat.

Reaching with her power, Jean lifted the broken body from the car so that it hung suspended in the air beside the road, poor ragged wings trailing the dirt. Scott was right - his body no longer breathed. But his spirit remained tethered to it; he wasn't long dead.

"Jean - this is the highway," Logan said. "What about _traffic_?"

_**"There will be no traffic,"**_ she assured him, not really paying attention. Instead, she reached out to Warren's spirit - _Don't go,_ she told him, extending mental arms. _Please don't go. We need you; we're incomplete without you._

_I'm tired, Jean,_ he replied. _I don't have the strength to stay. You're back, and safe. That's enough for me. Let me go._

_I can't. You saved me from myself; you showed me the way, you and Scott. Now, I'll save you._

Extending all her power, she enveloped her angel, rebuilding his body and eradicating the virus that had destroyed it. _I'm not losing you,_ she told him. This was her great fight. The three she'd saved before had shown her what she could do - from immunizing Doug to healing Ro to saving Piotr.

To raising Warren.

She was dimly aware of the flash of her power, and how Logan held up hands to shield his face, though he couldn't entirely look away, even while Scott couldn't look at all - afraid to hope.

Then it was done.

Warren was whole and back with them, and she lowered his body gently to ground. "Stand up and walk," she told him.

They stared at her - all three of them - but Warren did as she'd said. He stood, wings arching up and out for balance, all their plumage back, as pure white as joy. Jean took his hand and drew him over to where a stunned Scott had climbed out of the car's backseat. In contrast to Warren, he looked a mess, as if he'd just survived a war. Jean laid Warren's hand in his. _The Fisher King has his Percival back,_ she sent to them both.

Then she left them. Warren would be fine now, and so would Scott, and she still had a mansion full of the children to save.

* * *

"There's been a break-in, Sebastian. Oh, ruddy hell - would you _get up_, you useless sybarite?"

Shaw cracked one eye to find Nathaniel Essex had thrown open the door to Shaw's private master suite. "What are you on about now?" he muttered, glancing to the side to see if the sweet young thing who'd stayed the night was still there. She was. She was snoring, too. How . . . common. He'd have Richard pay her some bauble and pack her off. He couldn't stand women who snored.

"The labs have been broken into. I just got a call from my security, and from the police as well. The vaccine has been stolen."

That woke up Shaw. He propped himself up on his arms. "You _can_ make more?"

Essex waved a hand. "Of course. I'm more concerned by what those who took it will do with it."

Shaw put his legs over the side of the bed and reached for a robe. The girl in the bed was awake now and looking confused. "Go back to sleep, darling," Shaw said. "I'll have someone drive you home later."

Rising, he tied the belt of his robe and gestured out the door. He wasn't about to discuss this in front of the little slut. He doubted she'd have any clue to what they were referring, but it was best to conduct business outside the bedroom. He led the way downstairs to his office on the second floor, throwing open the doors and going straight to the liquor cabinet. He needed a drink. "So, do we have any idea who knew enough about the vaccine to come after it?"

"Of course," Essex said, meandering about the room, hands behind his back. "Hank McCoy and his friends."

"How would McCoy know there _was_ a vaccine?"

"I have no idea. Perhaps you should look to your own court a bit more strictly, Sebastian. Obviously, one of them squealed."

Shaw glanced around sharply. "I don't think so." But he was less certain than he sounded and ran over the names of those most likely to give up news of the vaccine to McCoy or his cronies. "We'll call an emergency meeting, and I'll have Emma do a telepathic search."

Essex plopped himself into a chair and put his feet up on the side of Shaw's mahogany desk, his hands folded. "I think you might look to Emma first of all."

"Emma!" Shaw spun around again, a mimosa in hand. "I doubt that."

"She was a student at Xaveier's school -"

"And hated it."

"- and was, in fact, seen headed north towards Westchester last Wednesday morning. My people couldn't follow her the entire distance without being noticed, but I can't imagine what she was doing in North Westchester unless visiting her old alma matter."

Shaw blinked. What the hell - "Emma does know other people in Westchester, you ass. If you didn't follow her all the way to her destination, then how would you know where it was?" He took a large swallow. "I trust her."

"Mmm, I'm glad you do," Essex replied, pulling down his feet abruptly. "Call your meeting, but I intend to question everyone myself."

Shaw shrugged. He'd learned a long time ago not to bother quarreling with Essex when he'd made up his paranoid mind. Shaw doubted Emma was behind the leak, but he no less than Essex wanted that leak _plugged_. He'd invested far too much in this little medical project for someone else to get to the vaccine - and the sales rights - first.

* * *

Erik was waiting for Mystique in Xavier's office. She found him sitting behind the desk in the borrowed leather chair that Summers had wheeled in for his own use, elbows resting on the arms and his hands folded in front of him while he stared out a window at the summer-rich flower beds. At her entrance, he looked up and around. "We found the vaccine," she told him without preamble, "but McCoy was injured in the escape. He's . . . changing. A new mutation. In any case, Xavier called back Jean - who came, although she's looking a bit 'glowy.'" She smiled faintly, but Erik didn't.

"Has she been able to vaccinate the children?"

"Or something," Mystique replied. "She's working her way through the sub-basement even as we speak. Xavier, of course, insisted on being last, in case she ran out of juice. Very noble of him."

"Charles is noble like that." It wasn't entirely a jest.

Mystique held up the syringe she'd brought upstairs. "Roll up your sleeve, please." He did as she instructed, trusting that she knew the right amount, and she administered the vaccine. "If we plan to leave before Xavier is up and about . . . "

". . . we need to go now, yes. The girl?"

"She said she's ready when it's time."

"Then notify her the time is now."

* * *

Feeling lost, Artie had been sitting in the computer lab because it was where he'd spent most of his time with Terry. He wasn't working on a computer, just sitting, when someone appeared in the doorway. "I thought I might find ye in here."

Certain his eyes were fooling him, he blinked, then mouthed, 'Terry?'

She grinned, impish. "Dr. Grey - or whatever she is now - said I was free to leave. Clean bill o' health'n all."

He jumped to his feet and ran to envelope her in a monster bear hug. She just laughed and hugged back. "Well now! That's what I call a 'hello'!"

* * *

Jean finished with everyone in the mansion before coming last to Xavier. He was waiting for her, weak but not - as he'd insisted - in immediate danger. Rather than fight with him, Jean had done as he'd asked, healing the rest first, understanding that he had to see everyone else well before he could be taken care of.

Now, standing beside his bed, she reached out with almost effortless ease to destroy the virus raging in his blood, fix the damage already done, and return him to even better health than when he'd first fallen ill - including the repair of his damaged spine. It took only moments. _**Now,**_ she told him when she was done, touching him on the lower shin and smiling to see his expression of complete surprise, _**you're well - and will be able to walk again eventually - but you should stay in bed for the rest of today. **_Telepathy was so much easier now than speech. _**Your body is worn out from the virus. And even though your nervous system has been repaired, the muscles in your legs are atrophied. Your physical therapy isn't enough to make them able to bear your weight immediately, so you'll have to take your time with that.**_

His eyebrows went up. _Must I rest in the medbay?_

Laughing a little, she made sure he was decently covered, then lifted him off the bed with her TK, settling him into his wheelchair, which had been waiting tucked away in a corner. _**You have my permission to rest upstairs . . . as long as you **_**rest.**

_And what about you, my dear? _he asked as he motored around the bed. _You, also, should rest._

_**I will, as soon as I'm done cleaning up and seeing to Hank.**_

_Have you any idea what's happened to him?_

_**Not exactly. I learned from Ororo what occurred at Grail Corp. Whatever that lab tech injected him with, it's re-triggered his mutation, but I don't know why. He's perfectly healthy - just . . . blue.**_

_And still unconscious?_

_**For now, yes. I can't say for how long, but it's natural. His body is adjusting to the change.**_

_I hate to say it,_ Xavier told her, frowning, _but this may have repercussions on his work for the CDC._

The flutter of Jean's annoyance sent up a shower of sparks. _**They already knew he was a mutant.**_

_They did, but his mutation wasn't terribly obvious. Much will depend on whether they fear problems with public relations._

Still irritated, Jean shook her fiery head, but knew the professor was right. It was one thing for the (educated) CDC staff to hire a mutant who could pass, versus hiring a mutant who - at the moment - looked more like the Cookie Monster than a man. She hoped their concern was misplaced. _**If Hank brings back the vaccine for this virus, maybe that will make a difference.**_

Xavier nodded, _Maybe it will. _And Jean walked him out of the lab, waving goodbye - the last Legacy patient to be released. She became aware, then, that Scott, Warren, and Logan had returned. Scott was upstairs, being headmaster and dealing with excited, amazed students - and parents. Father Rasputin had arrived, fearing it would be to learn his son was already dead, only to be boisterously greeted by that same son in the main foyer. Once Jean had healed Warren, she'd been able to fix up Piotr much the same. He was back on his feet, as good as new.

Logan, it seemed, had left the mansion to go for a walk; Jean brushed past his mind but let him be. And Warren -

"I came to be sure you'd take a break."

She whirled about to find him slouched just outside the medbay entrance, wings at rest and arms crossed. Smiling, she drifted across to meet him. _**I'm fine,**_ she sent. _**I still have a few things to do down here, **_**then**_** I'll rest.**_

He glanced past her inside to where Hank rested on one of the diagnostic beds, his mother sitting beside him. "How is he?"

_**Physically well. He'll probably wake by this evening, if not sooner.**_

"Can you fix - ?" He gestured to indicate Hank's new appearance.

_**Fix what? There's nothing actually wrong with him. This is part of his mutation, not an illness or wound.**_

"It's going to play hell with his self-image, which wasn't good to begin with."

_**The professor is worried about his job, too. What do you think? Would you hire him if you didn't know him?**_

"With his CV? Absolutely - but I'm not the best person to use as an example. I'll be sure he's hired somewhere, though, if I have to _make_ a job for him."

_**He'll want to stay with the CDC.**_

"I know. But what we want isn't always what happens."

_**Speaking of that - what about you?**_

"What about me?"

She gestured to his wings. _**The genie won't go back in the bottle, War. The public knows.**_

"I have a plan in mind." He made a dismissive gesture with his hand. "Now - go rest. Or . . . whatever you need to do." He frowned. "Can you _be_ human again?"

_**I think so,**_ Jean replied. _**It was just easier to do what I needed to without concentrating on staying enfleshed. **_ She shrugged. _**Let me finish cleaning up here, then I'll come upstairs. The entire bay has to be decontaminated.**_

"Do you need any help . . . ?"

_**No, and it's better if I handle this alone. Go. **_She turned him with gentle TK fingers and pushed him lightly towards the door. _**The sooner I'm finished here, the sooner I'll be up.**_

So he left her to begin the process of cleaning, while Edna sat with her unconscious son.

It didn't take long. Jean atomized every bit of cloth, plastic, rubber, or other disposable equipment that had been exposed to Legacy. She was done in a matter of moments, and had the two private-room beds changed while the exam rooms, surgery, and diagnostics were all returned to their intended functions. After that, she had to get rid of any trace of the virus on equipment that couldn't be disposed of, and it was in the process of this that something struck her.

If she could destroy the virus both within people and lingering on equipment, was she powerful enough now to wipe out Legacy _entirel_y? From everywhere? At once?

Maybe that should have been her first question after healing Ororo, but learning just what she could do now had been a process from the beginning, back in Alaska. Knowledge came in stages. The problem here would involve successfully expanding her consciousness enough to reach the whole globe so she could heal anyone infected by Legacy - eradicating all traces of Essex's deadly work. Unlike at the mansion, she couldn't touch everyone.

Or _could _she?

_Cerebro._

Turning, she swept out of the medbay.

Perhaps she should have told Xavier what she intended, but she was too excited by the prospect, too wrapped up in her sudden conviction. In her present Phoenix form, the machine wouldn't recognize either her retina or her voice, but that didn't matter. A wave of her hand as she approached parted the doors, and she entered, drifting down the long tongue to the control panel at the end. A second wave of her hand shut and sealed the doors behind her.

Then she lifted her arms and levitated herself into the very center of the great, metal globe. There, she spun slowly, waking the room to her presence, and in response, it threw her mind out into the astral web of the living world, connected to every mind on the planet, mutant or not. So many bright dots, so very fragile, and precious. She could destroy them with but a thought.

Or she could heal them.

The Phoenix released her terrible, holy fire like a boil of liquid spilling over the edges of a cup, flooding outward from this navel of the mental world. She found the bodies of all those infected and - gentle, gentle - struck down the virus within them, incinerating all traces of it, cleansing. She healed them, every one, from those on death's doorstep to the ones who didn't even know yet that they'd been infected. She had died and been reborn, and now she resurrected the world.

Or at least a portion of it. In a matter of minutes, not a single strain of Legacy remained anywhere on the planet, not even in the protected labs of the CDC. She erased, too, all record of its DNA from any computer. She wouldn't tamper with human memories, but she would leave absolutely no paper trail that might permit anyone to reconstruct it. Last, she took all the records of the virus' construction (minus the actual design of it), as well as the records of the vaccine, and dumped these straight into the computers of the FBI and NSC - along with all the names associated with its creation.

Minus one.

The Phoenix did not forgive Emma Frost for what she'd done, but because Emma had been willing to risk herself to tell Warren what she knew, then had come to the mansion to help them, the Phoenix spared her now.

All this accomplished, she fell - a bright streak of fire plummeting straight down to the floor of Cerebro's chamber far below. She hadn't thought to count the cost.

_Píete ex autoû pántes, toûto gár estin tò aîmá mou tês diathêkês tò perì pollôn ekkhunnómenon ..._

_**Drink it all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many . . . .**_

* * *

**Notes:** In the comics, Stryfe was the genetic twin of Cable - Nathan (Charles Christopher) Summers Askani. Here, there's no Cable, so I've simply used the name Nate Askani for "Strife." The quote is from the _Gospel of Matthew._


	40. alea iacta est

_Shivers of awareness flicker across her consciousness, and a filter of light streams in sheets of gold, scintillating but fuzzy. The water rocks her, tremulous, caressing, and there is a song somewhere in the voices of fishes. She floats here, translucent and barely visible; the sun's so lovely, breaking apart through the water. She had first been reborn through water, emerging from an earthly womb, and now she has returned to it, loses herself in it. _

_Divested of anything so cumbersome as a body, she rolls in the little lake waves, flitting about beneath the water. In her gossamer state, she reaches out to touch the flickers of summer life - brilliant, fleeting . . . beautiful like the sun. Life is beautiful because it will end. Who wants to live forever and taste joy grown cold on the tongue, enervated and senile? That isn't living. Better to die suddenly, burn richly, and end as ash. Better to save a thousand others than live for a thousand years. _

_The water is languid and cool, a pleasant place to rest, recover - and to forget. She'd made a choice and, for a few minutes, she'd felt impossibly powerful. Too powerful. Like a god. She held too much power for one human woman to wield. It might be better if she passed on, gave up the temptations, the siren call to do more. _

_"Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should."_

_Someone had said that to her once. But it was so difficult to know what she should do, when she could do so very, very much. Yet if she were powerful like a god, she wasn't a god, and the in-between was no comfortable place to be. _

_It was time to choose. _

_It was time to leave them. _

_It was time to mutate, one last step. _

* * *

The Fall of the Phoenix was quieter this time. No broken dams, no catastrophic deluge of water. Only four men felt her die.

One of them was upstairs in his room, getting into bed. One was in the headmaster's office, trying to explain to his brother what exactly had been going on since dawn. One flew high above the mansion's gables, free in the air as he'd never thought to be again. And one . . . .

After returning to the mansion, Logan had gone out for a smoke and a walk down by the little lake on the mansion property. Thus, it was he who witnessed the furious phosphorescent bubbling in the center of the water's surface. Breaking into a run, he sprinted along the lake's shore around to the boathouse and the dock. Rushing out onto this, he halted at the very edge when something _erupted_ from the surface, grand and beautiful and terrifying, a spinning ball of fire and light.

**"JEAN!"** he bellowed.

The ball paused, hovering about two-hundred feet in the air, spitting streamers of fire like prominences from the sun's corona.

_**"JEAN!"**_ he bellowed again, hands cupped around his mouth.

The ball spit more streamers, and began to rotate once more, slow at first, then more rapidly until it coalesced into the form of a great firebird with a woman at its heart. She spread her wings and descended to hover just beyond the end of the pier.

**I MUST GO. I AM . . . MORE THAN ANY HUMAN SHOULD BE. TELL HIM - TELL THEM BOTH - I AM SORRY. **

"So you're running away again?"

The Phoenix drew in wings slightly, as if perplexed. **RUNNING AWAY?**

"Like you did last time."

**LAST TIME?**

"In Canada. You ran, Jeannie. You got off that plane because it was easier than stayin' on it. It was easier than facing him."

The Phoenix began, now, to pulse, her confusion and distress evident in a spectrum light show that flitted over and through her. **I DO NOT UNDERSTAND. **

"Then _read my mind_. It's the one thing you ain't done since you got back. You've kept as far away from me as you could - because you know. You say you don't, but you do, and you don't want to." He paused, clenching his hands. He had to choose his words carefully; he understood that. "It's how we're alike - you'n me. Sometimes running is easier than staying, especially when the wild part takes hold, the impulsive part - makes us do things we ain't proud of later."

**DO WHAT? **But the Phoenix asked it in a voice that said she feared the answer.

"Read my mind," Logan baited again.

So she did. Her vise grip drove him to his knees, his hands holding his head in agony. But he could stand sharp, acute pain; it was like an old friend, and lasted only moments. Then she was drawing away from him rapidly, back out into the center of the lake, collapsing once more into ball form. Her color went from red-orange to gold to white to shining blue, and he wondered if she'd strike him down where he stood. After all, he couldn't claim innocence. He'd pursued her past the point that honor allowed, even kissed her when she'd been worried for the life of another man. He had no doubt that this wild, terrible creature could kill him, if she decided to. (He might even welcome it.)

But she did nothing, and behind him, he felt a sudden gust of wind, turned a little.

Winged Boy, of course. "You felt her die again?" he asked.

Warren nodded, but his eyes weren't on Logan. He stared at the bright ball of fire. "That's _her_?"

"Yup."

"What just happened?"

"I gave her the truth she's been running from. I showed her why she left that plane."

Now Warren turned to look at Logan - bird sharp, almost like the Lady of the Lake. "What do you mean? You've known all along?"

"Suspected, yeah."

"Scott's on the way," Warren said suddenly, chin raised a little, then added in explanation, "Xavier." He refocused on Logan. "Why did she leave the plane? Tell me what happened in Canada - and quickly, before Scott gets here."

* * *

Like Judas, she'd betrayed him with a kiss.

Such a simple answer, and Logan was right - she'd known the truth all along but hadn't been able to face it. It wasn't love that had brought her back, but _guilt_ - the need to atone for her sin. Yet how could she atone for that? She'd done the one thing she'd promised him, all those years ago, he need never fear from her.

It had been just a kiss, perhaps, and one she'd broken off herself. "Please, don't make me do this," she'd told him.

"Do what?" he'd asked.

"This." And she'd run . . . as she'd been running ever since - from Logan, from Scott, from herself.

How could she have betrayed Scott with Logan? When push had come to shove, she'd failed the test. It wasn't even that she loved Logan. She found him attractive, to be sure, but she'd been more attracted to his attraction to her. It was just . . . .

* * *

"Scott's not easy to live with," Warren said, rubbing his forehead. Logan had laid out for him in terse, blunt terms exactly what had occurred between himself and Jean Grey after his second return - the part of the story Warren _hadn't_ heard, the part Jean said she couldn't remember.

Now Warren looked up at Logan. "Things happened to Scott when he was young. She thought he was going to, I don't know, get better and be normal. Not overnight, but eventually. He _has_ gotten better - "

"- but he ain't never gonna be normal," Logan finished, adding, at Warren's look of surprise, "He told me a little about what happened to him. You don't live through that and turn out normal. You just learn to keep going in spite of it." For emphasis, he popped his claws to display them. "Winning is getting back on your feet when they push you down again."

Nodding, Warren tried to articulate the problem. "It's draining to live with a survivor, and she felt guilty for being drained. But she loves him. They have the kind of bond that comes along once in a lifetime."

"I know. That's part of what drew me to her - I wanted to be loved like he was."

* * *

She'd never stopped loving him. She'd just been . . . frustrated. Tired. And Logan had been there. She'd been weak, needing to know someone might want her enough to break the rules to get her. Then she'd seen Scott's face after he thought he'd hurt, maybe even killed her, there at the base, and the horror in his expression had broken her heart. He'd have died for her.

So she'd died rather than hurt him with what she'd done in his absence. She hadn't wanted to die. She'd just been unable to bear the pain she knew she'd see in his eyes, if he found out. His trust was so hard to win, but for her, he'd dared to trust one more time. He'd laid his heart in her hands and she'd promised to take care of it.

But she hadn't, had she? She'd known it wasn't going to be easy; Xavier had warned her of that going in. She'd insisted she could do it. For Scott, she could do it. But she hadn't been able to handle it, in the end. And the only thing she could think of to redeem what she'd done had been to lay down her own life for his. For all of them, yes, but for him most of all.

So she'd walked off the plane. She hadn't wanted to die. But she also hadn't known how to go on living with the enormity of her betrayal.

_That's often what those who commit suicide feel, Jean. _

The voice startled her. She'd been so focused on herself that she hadn't sensed the strong-gentle tendrils of the professor's mental touch seeking her out.

_People don't usually want to die - they just don't know how to go on living, either from despair or - as with you - from guilt. But do you remember what Scott told you all those years ago? That he didn't need a martyr, or caretaker, but a friend? You're trying, again, to protect him, acting like his mother, not his lover. He's stronger than you give him credit for. And he's old enough to forgive. I should know. _There was a touch of humor at that. _What he couldn't forgive last fall - and wouldn't be able to forgive again now - is if you _don't_ ask him for that grace. If you give up on life instead. _

_**But I hurt him. **_It was bitter-bitter, like wormwood, like gall; she wept fire tears.

_Yes. And _he_ hurt _you_. It's the price of loving someone, Jean. We will, inevitably, hurt them, and be hurt by them. But if we risk honesty, and vulnerability, we can heal them, as well. You healed us all from a virus born of callous greed. Don't let a virus born of your own fears kill what you and Scott share. It's very precious, and very rare. And there is someone you both know who can teach you how to heal each other with honesty. And to be vulnerable in that. _

_**Warren . . . **_she breathed in a voice of thunder.

_You once called him Percival. You weren't far wrong. Let him help you heal your fisher king. _

And with that, Xavier's mental presence withdrew.

* * *

Winged Boy didn't have a chance to answer Logan's comment about being loved before they heard Summers approaching the lake shore at full tilt. Both men glanced up towards the treeline as he emerged. "Let me handle this," Warren said.

"Be my guest, bub." Logan knew when to keep his nose out of things. He felt like the proverbial third wheel . . . except in this case, he was a fourth wheel.

Summers came thundering down the pier to halt, panting, beside them - his eyes on the fire form out in the lake beyond. "What in hell is going on?"

And despite his promise to Winged Boy, Logan couldn't resist saying, "Jeannie learned a few things she ain't too happy about."

Worthington glared him into silence, then gripped Summers' arm to redirect his attention from Logan to himself. And he told Summers what Logan had told him earlier. When Worthington was done, Summers looked like a brained bull with his jaw hanging open. He turned to Logan. "You _kissed_ her?"

Logan wouldn't have believed, back when he'd done it, just how ashamed he could feel for that act now. He shrugged. "She broke it off," he confessed. "Like I told you after, she chose you, kid, not me."

But he wasn't prepared for what happened next. Summers punched him - hard - in the jaw, then muttered, "Ow," in a surprised voice as he rubbed his knuckles. It hadn't been any love tap for Logan, either.

But, strangely, he felt better all the same. "Lesson Number One in fighting," he said. "Never sock a guy with a metal jaw unless you want to break your own hand."

"Fuck you," Summers replied, but then returned his attention to Jean - or the Phoenix, Logan supposed he should call her in her fire form. "So why's she out there? And how do we get her back?"

Even if his voice sounded calm, rational - all "fearless leader" - Logan could scent his anxiety. He was sweating, scared. "I think you'd better go after her," Logan suggested. "Ain't no plane for her to lock you up inside this time." And then, in belated compensation for what he'd done all those months ago, he added, "She let you down and knows it, and now she thinks what she did is too bad for forgiving. But there ain't nothin' she wants more, eh? You want her back? _Go after her. _She just wants to know you want her that bad. That's all she ever wanted."

Scott glared at him, but didn't argue, instead he turned to look at Warren, who'd listened silently. Warren shrugged with his wings. "Ten years ago, she chased you. Logan's right. It's time you chase her."

Summers was clearly put out, less - Logan thought - because he didn't want to chase her than because he feared she might prove unwilling to be caught after all. "So how am I supposed to do that? Swim?" But before he could even grunt in surprise, Winged Boy had grabbed him by the waist and beat those powerful wings, lifting them both off the dock. Like Barachiel's lightning, they shot towards the Phoenix over the lake.

Logan watched a moment, but this wasn't his fight anymore. He'd played his role. Turning on his heel, he headed back up to the mansion.

* * *

He was coming. They both were - she could feel them - and she had two choices, flee, or open her wings to accept her angel and her wounded prince.

She opened her wings. And three became One.

Fear had bound them, wrapping them each around their tender places, alone inside their fences of skin even when they stood together. One had feared to be abandoned again. One had feared that he would never be first for anyone. And one had feared being less than others saw her to be, and rejected when her clay feet were exposed.

Now, love released them. The one who'd feared to be abandoned had been the reason for a return to life. The one who'd feared to be second had been raised from the dead because he couldn't be done without. And the one who feared to be cast out of heaven found her failure forgiven. _You're human, Jean. I don't need you to be perfect; I prefer it when you're not. It means I don't have to be, either. _

Thus, they moved beyond the desperation of the boundary, and the vulnerability of being open to rejection - finding acceptance instead. Past the boundaries, they could be Real.

* * *

"Wait, wait - let me get this straight. You guys wear black leather suits and run around like Batman saving people from bad guys?" Alex Blanding looked from Ororo to Xavier to Kurt. "What comic book do you think you crawled out of?"

After their return to the mansion, Scott had tried to explain to his brother why nearly every adult except Alex, some parents (the Rasputins and Worthingtons), and a mortally ill Xavier had gone missing before seven o'clock on Saturday morning - and none of the students had found that odd. But when Jean had done . . . whatever it was she'd done, Scott had dropped everything and ran, leaving behind a confused, irritated, and alarmed Alex. Xavier had sent a telepathic message to Ororo, asking her to escort Alex to Xavier's suite where the professor had finished explaining what Scott had begun. Alex hadn't, Ororo thought, taken it particularly well.

"The X-Men," Xavier said now, "are more apt to rescue endangered mutant children than fight 'bad guys,' as you put it. It often requires more fast talking than fast punching."

Alex didn't appear convinced. "But you just told me you were the ones who took down that Magneto guy, and you were the ones who went up against Stryker to stop him from killing every mutant on the planet - which got Scott's fiancée killed instead. Now she's back from the dead, and you're the ones who went after the guy who made this virus - which turned Dr. McCoy blue. None of that sounds like talking to me. It also doesn't sound very safe." He rubbed his forehead. "And my brother leads them? I thought he was a high-school principal."

"He is," Ororo said, more amused by Alex's disgruntlement than she probably should have been. "But in the current political climate, the X-men are necessary."

Alex just slouched in the wing chair he occupied in the professor's sitting room where Xavier was propped up on the couch. Ororo occupied another chair, and Kurt, as was his wont, perched on a sideboard. The room's heavy velvet drapes had been drawn back to let in the early afternoon brightness, and Ororo was astonished to see that the clock read only 1:32. She felt as if she'd been awake for days.

Now, she sent privately to the professor, _Will he be a danger, do you think? _- meaning Alex.

_I don't believe so. He does not approve, but he's a smart young man and can work out for himself why our services might be necessary. He is also, unless I'm much mistaken, rather pleased to find that his brother is the field leader. _This last was offered with amusement.

"Okay," Alex said finally. "So you guys stole the vaccine from this nutjob who made the virus, but now you say it won't be necessary to use it because Jean just _cured the whole planet_? If she could do that, why steal the virus in the first place? And what kind of powers does she have, that she could cure everyone?"

"'Everyone' was not, in this case, a very large number - only a few thousand. Fortunately, the virus hadn't spread far. Yet the effort she expended to cure even those few thousand very nearly finished her. She does have limits, even if she's only gradually learning what they are.

"As for why she did not do it sooner - as noted, learning what she can do has been a process."

"But hasn't she had these powers all along?"

"Not exactly. They finished developing only recently, in the wake of her encounter with Magneto's machine. That machine might not have affected most mutants significantly, but it affected Jean. She . . . finished evolving."

"So what is she now?" Alex asked.

"Very, very powerful," Kurt broke in from his place on Xavier's dresser. He looked, Ororo thought, distinctly unhappy.

"And it was Jean who found me with Cerebro?" Alex asked. "And brought Scott to see me?"

"She'd hoped to reunite you both after your long separation."

"Without asking." Alex frowned.

"She meant well."

"Yeah, and the road to hell is paved with good intentions," Alex replied.

Ororo wasn't sure what she thought of Alex's anger; her own early orphaning had left her both bitter about and nostalgic for the idea of family. She didn't understand why Alex hadn't wanted to find his elder brother. Nonetheless, he did have a point about Jean, and she exchanged a look with Kurt, whose tail was swishing like a disturbed cat's. "She will have to be choosing," Kurt said. "She is neither spirit, now, nor woman, but both and neither. It is unlucky. And dangerous. No mortal can bear the power of God and stay mortal."

* * *

They could be excused, Kitty thought, for not realizing sooner that Illyana was missing. The Rasputins were just so relieved to have their middle son alive that, at first, they didn't stop to wonder why Illyana wasn't waiting in the den along with Mikhail, the eldest, for news. She was sent for, and they continued to celebrate, talking a mile a minute in Russian and assuming Illyana would soon turn up.

Except she didn't. And it was Kitty (who couldn't understand a word anyway) who first noticed a very troubled Terry standing off to the side. Kitty tugged on Pete's sleeve, and he turned to look.

"Illyana's gone," Terry said, blunt and brisk.

"Gone?" Mrs. Rasputin asked. "Has she gone to the shopping?"

"No, I mean she's _gone_," Terry replied. "Gone, gone. Her clothes and other stuff, 'tis all gone, along with her luggage. I looked about for her downstairs, then went up to our room - and nothing was left. She's gone."

"But gone where?" Father Rasputin asked, clearly dumbstruck. "Do you think she might have gone home, Mama?" He glanced at his wife.

But suddenly, a projected image of Mystique, and Magneto, appeared in the room between the Rasputins and Terry. It was Terry's friend, Artie, of course. He'd come in a little behind her.

"You're saying Illyana went with_ Magneto_?" Kitty asked, utterly astonished. Artie nodded.

"She would'na have done that!" Terry said, but Artie only nodded again, forming a picture of Illyana talking to Dr. Grey . . . who became Mystique. Kitty had heard all about that confrontation. Then Artie created more projections of Illyana talking to Mystique.

"Why would she have gone with Mystique?" Piotr asked, obviously as confused - and hurt - as his parents and brother.

Artie scribbled furiously on his ever-present pad, and handed it over. Kitty looked past Pete's arm to read, and he didn't stop her: _She was angry because you were dying. She didn't think Xavier was doing enough to find a cure, or punish the one who made the virus. She said, too, that she trusted Mystique more than Jean Grey, now. _

Piotr looked up. "But it was Dr. Grey who saved my life."

"People are scared of mutants," Father Rasputin said, sitting down heavily on one of the couches, "because they make you more powerful than them. Just the same, mutants can be afraid of more powerful mutants, and it is the fear that makes us to do bad things." He shook his head, his face sad. "I must talk to Professor Xavier. It seems I have regained one child only to lose another. Long ago, Abba Abraham also lost a daughter, and he, too, went after her. He wound up at an inn where she was working as a whore. There, he pretended to be a soldier and ordered a huge meal, and though he had not tasted meat or other rich food for nearly 50 years, he ate and drank with gusto. When the meal was over, the young girl invited him to come up to her room to lie with her. Once upstairs, she knelt to untie his shoes and speaking softly, Abba Abraham said, 'I've come a long way for the love of Mary.' Immediately, she recognized him, and went back with him." Father Rasputin rubbed his eyes again. "I'd go a long way for the love of Illyana." He looked towards his sons, who both nodded. "We'll get her back."

Kitty hoped they could.

* * *

Having brought Jean back to herself for a second time, Warren and Scott took her to the boathouse off the pier. She felt weak and raw, and Warren wrapped her in blankets while Scott made her coffee. She could have done any of that for herself, and faster, but she let them do it for her. Then they both sat with her. "What exactly did you do?" Warren asked. While he and Scott (and apparently Logan) had all felt her "die," or collapse, none of them understood the cause. Xavier had sent them rushing to help, but hadn't had time for long explanations.

Now, Jean took the cup of coffee from Scott. "I erased the virus. Completely. It doesn't exist anymore, and anyone who was ill with it - I healed them." She sipped the hot black liquid and pulled the blanket around bare shoulders. She would make clothes for herself when she'd recovered from remaking her body. "I took all the evidence from Essex's lab computers and transferred it to the government, too, then flagged it. I expect he and Shaw and the rest of them will be arrested sometime this afternoon - except for Emma." She sipped coffee again. "I left Emma off the list." Scott didn't react to that, but Warren breathed out softly and nodded.

After a minute of silence, she said, "I could do it again. If I can destroy a lentivirus like Legacy, I could take on HIV, too." Glancing at Scott, she gripped his wrist. He'd been HIV positive when he'd first come off the street all those years ago, and if his body's natural radiation had killed any virus in his blood so that he could never develop AIDS, HIV itself still hid in his resting memory T-Cells. He remained a carrier. Now, her touch eliminated the virus even there. "Like that," she said. "I could make it go away forever - not just from you, but from everyone."

Scott blinked. "I'm -"

"Completely negative, now."

"But if you do that for every infected person, you'll die again," Warren said.

"And rise."

"Maybe not. Look what Legacy did to you, and with HIV, we're not talking a couple thousand, or even a couple tens of thousands. We're talking _millions_, Jean. Last I read, there are almost a hundred million HIV-positive people in the world. If you healed them all - if you even _could_ - the effort would _kill_ you dead as doornail."

But she shook her head. "I don't think I _can_ die, War." She paused as the enormity of that finally struck her. "I could choose not to come back, maybe, but I can't _die_. Perhaps none of us really dies, if dying means ceasing to be. But no one else has strong enough TK to build a new body to replace the old when it stops working. I can. If that's immortality, I'm immortal. So I could heal everyone from HIV, I'd just have to do it in chunks - a few states here, a few countries there. It might take a week instead of a minute, but I could _do_ it. I know I could.

"Imagine everything I could heal now. Not just AIDS, but Ebola, cholera, malaria, typhoid - cancer, MS, TB, pneumonia . . . " Old killers and new. She rubbed her forehead and set down her mug. From the perspective of a doctor, the potential was mind-boggling. No more terrible deaths, no more suffering. And it wasn't just disease. She'd healed Scott's brain, and Charles' spine. If she could do that, then she could repair failing kidneys and livers, hearts and lungs, blind eyes and deaf ears . . . She could not only end disease, she could correct any fault that developed in a human body.

She was a medical Holy Grail.

"But then I think about it - really think. If I healed every disease and illnesses, could the earth bear the result? If we have an overpopulation problem now, imagine if everyone lived to a ripe old age? But I'm a doctor; healing people is my job. How can I let someone die when I could save him?" She spread her hands. "I'm not up to playing God like that. Eliminating Legacy was one thing; I just put right what one crazy mutant started. But if I go on to eliminate the rest, I _am_ playing God.

"Then I think about it again - how's healing them with my powers any different from creating a vaccine or new treatment? If we want to talk about God, God gave us brains to _use_, to make medicine. And God gave me these powers to use, too. Shouldn't I use them? Or would it upset nature's balance if I do? We may be able to create vaccines and treatments, and we may be able to virtually eliminate viruses - like smallpox or polio - but it takes years, decades, not weeks. And it's usually one at a time, not all of them."

She shook her head and looked at them both. "I don't know the answers. Sometimes I think I should do nothing at all - but playing with my hands off the wheel . . . isn't that just a denial of responsibility? Hiding my head in the sand? Yet when I make mistakes, they're not little. The more power you have, the more good you can do, and the more _bad _you can do. If I screw up, I _screw up_."

Reaching out for her mug again, she noticed that her hands were shaking. She could kill viruses, raise the dead, and remake bodies, but she still shook like a child when afraid. "That's what I was thinking about, out there in the lake. I can't . . . continue - not like I am. So I was thinking about passing on to the next step, whatever it is after mortal life." Looking up, she held Scott's eyes. "Then I remembered everything that happened before, between you and me, and Logan. Leaving would be the easy way out. It's shucking responsibility, too - my responsibility to you." A painful smile twisted her lips. "I need to go back to what I was before all this, but I don't know how."

Face resolute, Scott stood. "We'll figure it out - get you through it. Xavier's learned to live with being the most powerful telepath on the planet. You can learn to live as a phoenix." He held out a hand to her. "Come on."

She let him pull her to her feet, but though she kept her eyes on his face, she could see Warren in her peripheral vision. His own expression was far less certain.

The three of them trudged back to the mansion, she now in clothes, and flesh and blood, just like the other two, taking human steps and tripped by the occasional branch or hole. When she'd first come back, she'd been glad of such mortal frustrations; now, they annoyed. How much easier to levitate and fly them all back? Wouldn't Warren fly if they weren't with him? Was it any less wrong for her to use her powers to make her life easier?

But she didn't do it, felt guilty even for the thought. It was becoming increasingly easy for her to rely on her powers to circumvent the pitfalls of being enfleshed. And while yes, other mutants might use their powers proactively, theirs were far less dramatic. If she let herself rely on her powers all the time, she'd rapidly cease to be human at all. Whatever Scott had just said, whatever his reassurances, she couldn't escape the questions. How could she learn to live with being this . . . immortal phoenix and remain a human being? How long until the limitations of the mortals around her stopped being quaint and precious, and became trying and binding?

To make it worse, as soon as they entered the side door to the den, they found the mansion in an uproar again. Xavier transferred the news to Jean quickly - "Magneto and Mystique have left, and they took Illyana with them," she told Scott and Warren aloud.

"Fuck," Scott muttered. "They kidnapped her?"

"No, she went willingly, it seems, or that's what Artie thinks." Jean had a quick, telepathic conversation with Artie, too, and felt her heart lurch. "It's my fault. She left because she was scared of me." She stopped right there a few steps past the open door and hugged herself, bending a little at the waist.

Warren put an arm around her and raised a wing to embrace her. "Stop it. It's not your fault."

Getting right in front of her, Scott gripped her shoulders. "Look at me." She did so. "It was _Mystique_, Jean. She knows how to twist things to suit her own ends. If Illyana were just scared of you and ran away, she'd have gone home - not with Magneto and Mystique."

And Jean knew he was right - but only partly right. "You don't see how they look at me now," she whispered. "In the dining hall, or the den, or the medbay. I scare them."

"So did Rogue, when she first came here. Now, she's everybody's big sister. And Kurt - the kids didn't know what to make of him, at first. Now he's the mansion pied piper; the kids adore him. You _saved_ them, Jean. You saved everyone here, and you saved some of them twice. They know that, they're just getting used to you. Illyana ran because Mystique used fear against her, just like that bastard Kelly and his Mutant Registration Act with the larger population. There's no difference in method. Illyana is only fourteen, and easily swayed."

"He's right," Warren added, holding her tighter, offering comfort more in presence than logic.

She took a breath and straightened. "I guess." But she didn't feel convinced.

Scott let her go. "I'd better go up to the professor's room. He's telling me Father Rasputin is there and he wants me." He glanced at Warren, who waved him off.

It was Warren who escorted her up to the third floor, and her room. They ran into children on the way, most of them happy and relieved. Some stopped long enough to thank or hug her. The professor must have told everyone what had happened, or someone had. And Scott was right, they didn't seem quite as nervous of her as they had been even a week ago. But a few still shied away. "It'll take time," Warren said as one of the younger ones, Paige Guthrie, saw Jean coming and ducked back inside the dining hall. "Nothing happens overnight." Pausing by the elevator, he hit the button and there was a short wait until the doors opened for them. Inside, Warren stood with a shoulder to the elevator rear and Jean stared at the floor, arms crossed. "You know," he went on, "I'm not sure my parents know I'm all right. I guess I should go tell them. They came to the medbay last night to see me, but it's been too hectic since. I just hope they haven't killed each other yet, being stuck in the same guest room for more than twenty-four hours."

Jean smiled despite herself. It was no secret that Warren's parents kept not only separate bedrooms, but separate wings in their great, monstrous Long-Island mansion, and stayed married for pragmatic reasons alone. "They do love you, War. I know it doesn't always feel like it, but your father did whatever Xavier asked him to, when you were sick. Getting that helicopter repainted in one day wasn't exactly cheap."

"Pocket change," he replied.

She shook her head and eyed him sideways; his face was stiff, not looking at her as the doors opened. "But he could have complained about the inconvenience," she told him. "He didn't. Not once. And they both wanted to come here to be with you. When push comes to shove, you're their son."

"Wings or not, huh?"

"Wings or not." They got out and looked at each other, there in the hall. "Go see them."

He sighed, exasperated but compliant. "All right. Then maybe they'll go home again and I can get some peace and quiet."

"In a mansion full of teenagers?" She laughed at him. "Good luck." And they parted.

Her rooms with Scott were on the east end of a T-square hallway, Warren's usual guest suite opposite, and the professor's at the far end of top T-bar. Now as she turned the corner, she found Bobby Drake sitting on the wooden floor outside her door, his head hanging, clearly waiting. At her approach, he looked up, then scrambled to his feet. "They said you raised Warren. He was dead and you brought him back to life."

She blinked. "Who told you that?"

"Logan. I talked to him when he got back; he said you raised Warren from the dead." He drew a breath, face frozen for a moment with fear and hope. "Save John. Please - save John, too. If you could save Warren, you can save John."

For a second time, her heart clenched in her chest and the expression in his eyes broke her heart. "Oh, Bobby," she breathed.

And he knew, even before she said it, he knew and the tears sprang. "Please," he said again. "Please save him. I loved him and I never told him. I just want him to know -"

"I can't," she said, and covered her mouth with her hand, sobbing hard once. "I'm sorry, I can't."

"But you saved Warren!"

"Only because he'd just died. He'd stopped breathing and his heart had quit beating, but his spirit - whatever you'd call the thing that makes him Warren - _that_ was still there. He wasn't brain dead. But John . . . " her voice trailed off. "He's gone, Bobby; he's been dead a week. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

She moved towards him, meaning to embrace him, but he shoved her away, almost violently, his entire body going white with cold - colder and colder until he became virtually translucent. Pure ice. "Bobby . . . " she breathed, unsure whether to be amazed or alarmed for him.

"I hate you!" he screamed. "I hate you! You only save the ones you love! You don't care about who anyone else loves!" And he ran, still in his ice form.

She collapsed on the floor where he'd been and put her head in her hands. Was Bobby right? Had she saved Warren only because she loved him? If she could halt Piotr at the edge of death and recall Warren from just beyond it, could she reach even further to bring back St. John?

"No," she said, standing up. "No." It was wrong; there was a line not to be crossed. St. John lay in a freezer in the sub-basement, or his body would already be decaying. He wasn't Lazarus and she wasn't Jesus.

But how many would think she could be - should be? She'd been prepared to kill Nathaniel Essex in order to get the vaccine for Warren, so she knew to what lengths grief could drive a person. She didn't blame Bobby for his anger, even while she wouldn't do what he'd asked . . . even if she could. And she understood at last what Scott had meant when he'd told her that just because she could do something - even a kind thing - it didn't mean she should. She also understood why the professor had always remained so thoroughly on the sidelines. It wasn't just because he knew others would fear his power, but because he knew others, driven by desperation, would ask him for what he _shouldn't_ do. And if she didn't put a stop to it, they'd expect the same of her.

* * *

Rogue and Jubilee's room on the second floor had become an informal discussion hall-cum-counseling center. The adults had other things to deal with - Illyana's disappearance not least - so the two girls had appointed themselves as morale officers, along with Kurt, who'd shown up trailed by a cloud of little kids. He'd led them all down the hall to his own room, to keep them occupied with stories. Rogue and Jubilee were left to handle the older ones, and if the general reaction to this cure was relief and excitement, there were still a boatload of questions.

"Yes, Legacy is really gone," Rogue said now to Jamie Madrox, one of the last to come haunting their doorway with inquiries.

"From, like, everywhere?"

"Yeah, from everywhere. That's what the professor told us."

"And some guy _made _it?"

"Yeah - the FBI is gonna get him."

"Wow." He headed for the door, then glanced back, "So I don't, like, have to keep watching where I throw my Kleenex?"

"In the _trash can_ would be good," Jubilee chimed in. "You know, like normal human beings?"

"But you don't need to put them in plastic no more," Rogue added.

Jamie left, and both girls collapsed on their beds, though they left the door open. "Wow," Jubilee said. "Is this what it feels like to be a teacher?"

"I guess." Rogue blew hair off her sweaty face. It was so damn hot in all the clothes she had to wear, to keep others safe.

There was another knock on the door and both girls sat up to see who'd come calling now. Scott stood there. "Hey - " Rogue said, wondering if they'd somehow gotten themselves in trouble for overstepping their bounds.

"A little bird told me you've both been answering questions to keep people out of my hair," Scott said. "I wanted to say thanks."

Rogue smiled and Jubilee popped her gum at him. "So . . . you gonna let me borrow your car next weekend?"

He snorted. "There are limits to my gratitude, Jubes."

"''sides," Rogue reminded Jubilee, "you're helping me move up to Ithaca next weekend."

And that stopped all three of them cold, even Scott. "So I am," Jubilee replied, grinning. In the desperation of Legacy, they'd all forgotten that college would be starting soon for Bobby, Rogue and Jubilee. Life went on.

"For that," Scott said, "I think you'll need the _van_. My car has no trunk to speak of." And he shot them both a very cocky grin - one that they could see made it all the way to his eyes.

Rogue grinned back, but it struck her that they were no longer alike. She'd always felt a connection to him because he'd been able to understand what it was like to have a deadly mutation he couldn't entirely control. But that wasn't true for him any more. He was free of the glasses. She wasn't free of the gloves. Looking down at her hands, she fisted one.

"Or," Scott went on now, "there's always the option of flying." Rogue's chin jerked up. "How'd you like to arrive at Cornell in War's jet, Marie?"

She found herself grinning now, too. "Do I get the pilot seat?"

Jubilee crossed her eyes. "If she's in the pilot seat, I want a parachute. Already on my back."

* * *

Jean had waited until Xavier was alone again before going in to talk to him herself. "I thought you told me you would rest?" she admonished as she let herself into his sitting room. He was positioned on the couch with a blanket over his legs and a mountain of pillows behind, wheelchair nearby.

He smiled up at her. "Duty called."

She seated herself in a wing chair near the window and looked out through the panes. "Duty is a harsh mistress, isn't she?"

He'd been flipping through some papers, but now set them aside, chin down to consider her carefully. "What is it?"

She looked back at him. "I can't stay like I am now." And she gave him her experiences and thoughts of the afternoon.

When she was done, he folded his hands together atop the blanket and said, "I am not usually in favor of mutants who wish to avoid rather than adapt to their mutations, but this is not a usual situation, either - and you may be correct in your concerns. What do you plan to do?"

"I don't know for sure yet." She looked away again. "But whatever I do, there are things I need to take care of first."

He simply nodded. "This is a choice you must make for yourself, Jean. For what it's worth, you have my blessing - although I would urge you to do nothing rashly."

She stood. "I'm not. This isn't like earlier today. And thank you; your blessing means a lot, Charles." She departed, becoming, even as she exited the suite door, the creature of air and fire once more.

* * *

In the newsroom, Trish Tilby had just been called by one of her contacts at the Bureau to let her know that a major operation was going down, regarding the Legacy virus. "Some arrests are being made even as we speak."

"But if - as they keep insisting - there's no evidence that the virus was engineered, why would there be any arrests?"

"You tell me." The voice was amused.

"Are they going to change their tune later? I have independent confirmation that this virus wasn't natural."

"I don't know. All I know is that the FBI got new information, and APBs were issued. Big names, Trish. The FBI's going to have to say _something_, though what's released will be highly controlled, I'm sure. Still, expect some statements tomorrow."

"Thanks." She hung up and turned back to her computer, calling up her story and tapping her nose with a pencil while she pondered what she'd scripted. She'd done her best to both reveal what she knew, and protect her sources. Given that she'd used Hank as a source before and he might be viewed as the obvious leak, she'd been sure to include his name in the story with one of his "no comment" remarks, and for her allegations that the virus was engineered she'd used "inside medical personnel" rather than "a CDC insider" in an effort to deflect suspicion.

The evening news was gearing up to go before cameras and readying lead stories, but Trish still wasn't satisfied with her copy. It might have to wait until the morning show. (She didn't want to consign it to the late news.) Sighing and glancing at her empty coffee cup, she rose to fetch more, but swung by the women's room on the way. Coffee went right through a girl.

The new, remodeled, high-tech bathroom was empty when she exited her stall to wash her hands. Soft fluorescent lights illumined stainless steel walls and clean lavender tile, and running water almost obscured the pneumatic hiss of the door opening. But from just beyond the partition, a bright orange light flared, and startled, she raised a dripping hand to shield her eyes. The light came around the edge of the partition and Trish resisted either gasping or running back into one of the stalls.

It was a woman . . . more or less. At least, it seemed to have a woman's body, but there were no clear features that she could make out, just the light and the impression of great wings. "Who - what - are you?"

"_**A friend,**_" the other said. "_**A Phoenix." **_The resonating voice sounded amused at the name. _**"I have a story for you, Trish Tilby. Some of it, you may broadcast; most of it, you cannot. But it will answer your own questions, and someone - not a mutant - should know the full truth. Are you willing to hear but keep part of that to yourself?"**_

Hand still up in front of her face, Trish considered. "I'm a reporter," she replied. "It's my job to tell the public the truth."

_**"But even reporters know there are some things that cannot be shared, and the privacies of the innocent should be protected. I think you will understand when you know the full truth. But I must first have your word."**_

"What if I disagree that whatever you tell me should be concealed?"

The bright figure seemed almost to smile. _**"You are an honest woman. Your word will bind you. But I can't tell you the full story unless I know it won't harm any of the innocents who may be involved, and won't backfire on mutants."**_

"I have no desire to harm mutants."

_**"I know - that is why I came to you in the first place."**_

"Who are you, though? And how do you know me, or what I think?"

_**"Your word, Ms. Tilby."**_

Trish didn't answer immediately. If she agreed, she might let the story of the decade slip through her fingers. Then again, this "Phoenix" hadn't said she couldn't report _any_ of it, just not some of it, and she shared the fault of all good reporters - an insatiable curiosity. "All right. It may be the stupidest choice I've ever made, but all right. You have my word that I won't report everything you tell me, only what's cleared."

And so the Phoenix revealed what had happened with Legacy, how it had come to be - and why - and that it was no more. Yet Trish suspected she hadn't been told everything. For instance, she still had no idea who this Phoenix was to have gotten involved, but she did understand why she couldn't report everything. First, who would believe her? Second, the existence of a mutant as powerful as the Phoenix would terrify the country into passing the MRA as soon as legally possible - even if the Phoenix were on their side. (Yet if mutants this powerful did exist, was the MRA such a bad idea?)

_**"Now you understand why you cannot tell the whole story,"**_ the Phoenix said. _**"But you can report some of it. Legacy is gone. That will be confirmed by any hospital with Legacy patients, as well as the CDC. You may also report that a group of mutants created it, and a group of mutants destroyed it. Not all of us would harm others."**_

Trish nodded, though she had another question, one more personal. "You said Hank stole the vaccine?"

Again, Trish had the impression that the Phoenix smiled. _**"Yes, he did - with help. In the end, the vaccine wasn't needed, but he risked his life to get it. Hank McCoy is a man of many talents and great courage."**_

"And he was hurt?"

_**"Yes, he was."**_

"How is he now?

_**"Unconscious. His body is processing the new changes that he's suffered."**_

Trish pondered that, curious but also afraid, wondering how he looked now - even while she realized it was a shallow question.

As if reading her mind - and maybe she was - the Phoenix said, _**"He's not a monster, Trish. Though yes, his new appearance will take getting used to."**_

"Would he be willing to let me see him, do you think?"

_**"I don't know. Would you be willing to visit?"**_

"Yes." She straightened her shoulders. "Yes, I would."

The sparking smile again. _**"I thought you might. You have a good heart, Trish Tilby. Call the mansion and tell him you know what happened, and you still want to see him. And good luck with your story. Me, you won't see again."**_

Then the fire-woman simply . . . blinked out. Gone. After the bright warmth of her presence, the modernesque bathroom seemed dim and cold, and Trish blinked several times before she could make out much of anything clearly.

"Well -" she muttered to no one in particular. "Doesn't that beat all?" She glanced at her reflection in the mirror, feeling as if her encounter should have marked her, but she looked just the same. Fluffing her curls, she turned and hurried out. For a scoop of this magnitude, it had to be the evening news' lead story - which meant some fast writing before air-time.

* * *

Hank's first awareness of the world again was the sound of the air conditioner. It was loud, and his eyelids felt heavy. He could tell he was in the medbay because of the smell. Someone had been disinfecting with Clorox, and he wrinkled his nose at the overwhelming scent.

"Hank?"

It was his mother's voice and he turned his head a little in that direction, though he still didn't open his eyes. He felt so weak. "Mom," he rasped.

"I'm here, honey. I'm right here."

Her hand gripped his, though it felt so . . . small. Her hands had always felt small in his; most people's did. But this was different.

"Water?" He could barely talk. He heard her move, then she was lifting his head and helping him drink through a straw. His mouth felt funny, as if stuffed with wool, and it slurred his speech. He was still too tired too open his eyes. "What happened?" he whispered when she'd laid him back again. "The last thing I remember was working on Pete. How is he?"

"He's fine. Everyone is. Jean healed them. I don't know how exactly, but the medbay's empty. Everyone's been released."

"She didn't need the vaccine?" After all that effort . . . .

"She needed it. She told me that without having it, being able to . . . see into it . . . she wouldn't have known how to cure them. She wanted you to know that. She couldn't have saved them without you."

"Everyone, Mom. It was a team effort. How are the rest?"

"They're all fine."

"So what happened to me?"

"We don't know, exactly. There was something in that syringe the lab tech stabbed you with. Jean hasn't had a chance to analyze it yet, but it . . . caused a change."

"A change?" And now, he did open his eyes. The light was bright, and he blinked. "What change?" Could that explain why he felt somehow different? Her face was worried.

"You mutated again, Hank."

_"What?" _It came out as a croak.

"Jean thinks your original mutation wasn't entirely finished - like hers. Her mutation was triggered too young, before puberty. You were born with yours, and never went through another." A pause. "Until now."

He struggled to sit up but she restrained him. "Don't. Your body is still very weak."

"What the hell happened to me? What change? You mean I look different?" Or more different.

She nodded.

"A mirror, Mom. Bring me a mirror."

"Can't it wait?"

"No, it can't."

Nodding again a bit sadly, she rose, disappearing from his field of vision. He could have turned his head, but felt frozen by anxiety, unable to move. After a moment, she came back, carrying a small compact from her purse. She held up the mirror so that he could see his own reflection.

"My God . . . ." he said.

* * *

It was twilight when she returned one last time to the lake, to the elements opposite of her own. Water and earth to balance air and fire. Everything was ready, and the longer she put this off, the more she feared she wouldn't be able to let go. She had to end it while she still felt convinced that this was the right thing to do.

One last time, she reached out to all of them, all the bright minds in the mansion and even beyond, felt the texture of their hopes and dreams, their joys and griefs. She tasted them, flitted over them, caressed them . . . and let them go. Three, she released last: Charles, Warren, and Scott.

Far away in Xavier's office, Scott bellowed, "No!" (Startling everyone on the first floor.)

_**"Don't be afraid - and trust me, Scott. Maybe I haven't earned it, after what I did in Canada, but trust me."**_

She let him go, pulling down her enormous power and cloaking herself in it as she floated above the waters. Concentrating, she looked deep into the most fundamental building blocks of her own self, her DNA. A subtle shift here, a slight change there. A final burst of power to make it so.

The firebird above the water disappeared. And the sun dipped past the tree line.

On the lakeshore near the pier, the body of an unconscious, naked woman washed up, wet red hair spread out around her in the dirt. A minute later, a winged form appeared from above the trees and dropped down next to her, checking her pulse and lifting her off the ground.

Borne in his arms, her angel carried the Lady of the Lake back to her home, and her one-eyed king.

* * *

**Notes:** The Latin phrase that titles this chapter translates as "The die is cast" - Caesar's famous line crossing the Rubicon. Barachiel is one of the lesser known archangels (there are seven total). The story of Abba Abraham and his niece/daughter Mary (later called St. Mary the Harlot) was well known in the early church and is part of the _Sayings of the Desert Fathers_.


	41. Personal Journal: Someone Has To

Jean came back from the dead for me - twice - and her resurrection meant a great deal.

But that she accepted the inevitability of death again, for my sake, means more.

When Jean returned to Breakstone Lake that Saturday evening, it wasn't to pass beyond her humanity, as I'd first feared. It was to return to it. She could've just walked away from me and all my shit, and with good reason. I'm like an emotional black hole sometimes. But she didn't. In the end, I think she made the harder choice.

She gave up her telekinesis. If the unique combination of TK and telepathy is what made her a Phoenix, it was primarily her TK that fueled it. So she surrendered it. The telepathy, she kept, as - so she and Xavier explained later - giving that up would have been like giving up one of her senses. And without the TK, her telepathy made her no more unique than Xavier.

So she used her enormous powers to rebuild her body one last time - altering it just enough so that she no longer had the very power that had allowed her to alter it in the first place, paradoxical as that sounds. She's as mortal now as I am. And while that means I could lose her tomorrow - and it would be for good - it also means I won't lose her forever as she evolves into something I can never follow.

"I couldn't leave you," she told me when Warren brought her back to the mansion. "It's what I did to you the first time. I couldn't face you after what happened with Logan, so I betrayed you _twice_."

This time, she chose to diminish and stay with me - with us.

But it wasn't an unconsidered choice. She'd needed her powers as Phoenix to lay the groundwork for her public return, and she accomplished all that before giving it up - though it means she's returning sooner than we'd planned. In fact, the very next morning, Sunday, I drove her west to Hershey, Pennsylvania, where she'd established her history since the Blackout. It was far enough away that the Westchester County Department of Public Safety might have missed a Jane Doe matching her description, but not too far away to believe she could have wound up there in the chaos after the Blackout.

Anyway, I dropped her off and she took up her fictional life as an orthopedic nurse at Hershey Medical Center. An amnesiac LPN would have attracted far less attention than an amnesiac doctor trying to re-attain her medical license. We've decided that it's best for her to live there for a few more weeks. If we had to start early on her return, Xavier wants to put off her 'discovery' as long as possible. I miss her, but feel easier about it than when she'd brought Madelyne's life to a close. I know she's coming back to me, so I can wait. I'm in a different place now, after everything that's happened.

Meanwhile, the fabric of general mutant life has been altered yet again, less than a year after the Blackout occurred.

Legacy (like AIDS before it) revealed people who had, heretofore, lived incognito - closeted, if you prefer. The virus didn't spread nearly as far as AIDS, but it still made its impact felt, and suddenly non-mutants were faced with the knowledge that their 'normal' neighbors were mutants, or their boss, or the homecoming king . . . It might not be Rock Hudson, but it was a start.

Undoubtedly, the most prominent mutant revealed by Legacy was Warren. And while I wouldn't have wished it on him, a part of me must confess it's advantageous. His reasons for staying in the closet had all stemmed from fear of the unknown, and despite his disgust with others of his own social class, in one way, he's very much like them - conservative. He prefers the status quo, and his risks are, in the end, small ones. I don't mean to imply he's a coward. He's not, but bravery is often inverse to what one has to lose, and Warren had - and has - a lot on the line. I was braver when I had the luxury. These days, with a house full of kids, and responsibility for them, I don't take unnecessary risks. So I understood him enough to forgive his fears.

Yet Worthington Stocks have (so far) suffered only minimal blows after his public unveiling. Personally, I think the business world is more impressed by Warren's economic savvy than his DNA, and it probably doesn't hurt that his particular mutation links him to religious iconography. As much as people pretend not to be affected by that, we are. Fortunately, in his case, the angelic exterior matches a benevolent heart.

Others have been less fortunate. Hank's transformation led him to bury himself in the mansion sub-basement, trying to figure out what, exactly, he'd been injected with. We'd all thought he'd push to go back to the CDC, and had worried that the Center might not permit him to. Exactly the opposite has happened. He's been neither fired nor laid off, but we can't get him to return to Atlanta. We can barely get him to emerge from the lower levels in a house full of mutants. Xavier says we shouldn't rush him; acceptance of such a massive change takes time. Meanwhile, and in recognition of his contribution to the end of Legacy, he's been given a paid leave of absence from the CDC.

Legacy itself is completely extinct. Jean didn't just destroy the virus in human bodies, or in samples - she wiped out every record of its composition. But not every record of its creation. Those, she downloaded into government computers, and Sebastian Shaw and his colleagues have been rounded up on charges of bio-terrorist conspiracy. I don't think even the combined money and influence of The Hellfire Club's inner court can save them. In this post-9/11 world, the idea that a group could and would manufacture a deadly virus sets off all the government's paranoia. Only Emma Frost escaped.

And Nathaniel Essex - although not because he wasn't named. The son of a bitch simply disappeared. If he's really as old as he claimed to be to Jean, I guess he has a lot of practice at reinventing himself. He'll be back . . . and that scares the hell out of me. If there's anyone who's likely to carry around a mental blueprint of Legacy, it's Essex.

Although we have a counter ready if we need him - Doug Ramsey. He came to Jean the very morning we were to depart for Hershey, and told her that if someone didn't wipe his memory, he had the DNA for Legacy imprinted on it. But she didn't wipe it. "I don't want the information stored where it might be accessed, but that someone has it . . . ." She'd smiled at him. "Just don't tell anyone besides those of us in this room" - herself, me, Xavier, Ro and Hank - "that you have an eidetic memory. Or at least that you have an eidetic memory _and_ saw Legacy's DNA."

As for the world at large, it knows only that the virus is gone, that mutants paid to have it created - a virus attacking their own, not normal humans - and that mutants, in turn, destroyed it. It's raised new questions, but not related to the MRA, thankfully. Instead, the government is asking whether it would be a good idea to incorporate known mutants into police squads, or the FBI. I have no idea if anything will come of the questions, but at least someone is finally asking them. Maybe the days of needing a group like the X-Men are numbered.

Some people think I get a charge out of being field leader, and would be loathe to give up the black leather to professionals. Truth is, I'll be _relieved_ on the day I can. Let someone else have the job who really wants it. I do it now only because someone has to.

That's pretty much been the story of my life. I do what has to be done, what necessity, and the situation, requires. Someday, maybe I'll get to do what I want, instead. That hope is what gets me out of bed in the morning.

Well, that hope and my alarm clock.


	42. Fisher King

"You've said before that you consider the MRA to be an illegitimate bill. In what way is it illegitimate?"

"Actually, I called in unconstitutional. In this country, we assume innocence until guilt is proven, but the MRA treats mutants much the same as convicted criminals, forcing them to register their whereabouts publicly. The only other registries of that type are for sex offenders."

Trish Tilby was interviewing Warren Worthington - an exclusive special report for Channel Seven News. Warren had called personally to offer an interview to her and only her, and although she was a field reporter, in the wake of her Legacy scoops, the network had cheerfully agreed. Her success had triggered no little jealousy around the studio, but it came with the territory. She was used to it.

She was taping the interview at Worthington Enterprises Tower, to be shown later on the 6 o'clock news. She found Warren to be an easy interview - articulate, intelligent, and polite, but not inclined to be either led or cornered. He was a top-ranked businessman for a reason, and if the interview benefitted her, he'd allowed it because it also benefitted him. Mutual usury.

The little conference room that he'd set aside for the interview was deceptively comfortable, with an expensive solid-wood table and chairs for them both (that didn't encourage slouching). His own was backless, and he wore a specially tailored shirt so that his great ivory wings arched in full view. He'd even posed so the camera could get a shot of his back, demonstrating how the wings worked, all before they'd gotten down to the more serious questions - the political ones.

"It's interesting that you compare the MRA to the registration of sex offenders," Trish said now, "as others compare it to gun registration. Aren't these mutations like natural weapons?"

"A weapon?" He laughed in apparent amusement. (She'd found it hard to throw him.) "What am I going to do? _Flap_ someone to death? I'd say some of the manicures I've seen on women could be considered weapons before my wings are."

Then he grew serious. "A gun is a thing - an object - not a person. When the gun owner disposes of the gun, he or she is no longer kept track of. It's the gun, not the person, being registered. I've heard lawmakers try to say it's the mutation not the mutant being registered, but that's an artificial division. Mutants can't get rid of their mutations. Gun ownership is a choice; being a mutant isn't, and registering mutants is more akin to registering someone based on race, or eye color, or height - genetic attributes that aren't chosen. And that violates all kinds of civil rights and privacy laws.

"Guns are registered because they're potentially deadly. Not all mutations are - my own being a case in point. In fact, most mutations _aren't_ particularly dangerous. Furthermore, guns can be used to commit crimes, or to stop them. And guns are used to hunt for food. Mutants can use their powers for harm, like Magneto, or for good, like whoever erased Legacy."

"That might, itself, feel frightening," Trish countered. "That someone - a mutant someone - has that much power." And before he could interrupt, she went on, "I know it's a complicated issue. Mutants aren't necessarily guilty of any crime, but some do present a danger. I don't think you can deny that much. It's no secret that manifesting mutant teens have caused unintentional damage - even death."

He leapt right on that. "There are two flaws with that logic. First, mutants don't know they _are_ mutants before manifesting, so passing the MRA wouldn't stop manifestation accidents. Second, a person can't be blamed for something completely accidental. It's not even recklessness or negligence. And many of those kids are traumatized by the experience. Who wants to hurt or kill a friend or family member?"

"I have to wonder," Trish went on, "if there isn't some way both to protect those children and protect others from them, _without_ painting them with a Mark of Cain?"

"Mutants are afraid to come forward because of the consequences," Warren said. "But that very fear means kids won't go to anyone if they notice changes - assuming they even realize what the changes signify. If we didn't make them afraid of being harassed and treated as criminals, we might be able to help in some cases. Basically, until being a mutant is normalized, like going through puberty, accidents that might be prevented will continue to happen."

Trish leaned forward. "How do you think we could normalize being a mutant? That's not a trick question. You're one of the top businessmen in America, used to facing difficult struggles."

Warren bent forward, too, hands clasped before him on the tabletop, creating a nice pose for the cameras zeroing in on his face. "I'd urge familiarization. Mutants hide for a good reason; we've been afraid of the consequences of coming forward - myself included. But we're a lot less scary if people get to know us - even those of us who might look scary on the surface." He grinned. "Not all of us have angel wings, but we can still be angels. In fact, I'd like to introduce a friend of mine."

"Of course."

This had been planned in advance.

"He was an acrobat of the high wire in the Munich Circus - the Amazing Nightcrawler. He loves children, and they love him. He's a devout Christian - never misses confession and Mass, if he can avoid it. Some of us are angels by genetics; some of us are angels by nature. Kurt's the latter. Yet people - mutant or non-mutant - can be guilty of judging books by covers, which would be very unfortunate in Kurt's case." He glanced over his shoulder. "Kurt?"

And Kurt Wagner entered the conference room (on his feet, not via teleportation) as the camera swung to focus on him. "Hallo -" he said, smiling so as not to show off his fangs, at least not immediately. Trish and the camera crew had met him before getting started, so she didn't react - but she could just imagine the gasps that would be heard on the other side of the TV screen in the living rooms and dens, bars and gyms of the New York area. She grinned. She was the first reporter to have such obvious mutants appear in a controlled interview environment, and she'd make the most of it. The angel and the demon seated around an expensive conference table in a high rise off Wall Street, drinking coffee and answering her questions . . . .

"Thank you for joining us, Mr. Wagner," she said. "Tell us about your mutation - "

* * *

Both interviewees were back at the mansion in time to see the interview aired, and everyone gathered in the mansion game room to watch - even Hank came up from the sub-basement, lurking in back, flanked by Scott and Warren. On the whole, Warren thought the interview went well. Trish hadn't edited the tape unfairly and the studio hadn't prejudiced it by either introduction or conclusion. Given the three-ring media circus his mutation might otherwise have made, this frank but unsensationalized presentation was the best he could hope for. Xavier seemed to agree. When it was over, the professor sent telepathically, _A virtuoso performance, Warren. You're far better in these situations than Jean. _Xavier was seated on the sofa, a pair of metal crutches leaning against the sofa arm beside him. He still required the wheelchair for any distance, but could walk with crutches for brief spans.

Now Warren sent,_ That's because Jean lets the bastards get to her. I don't. Not to mention Trish is a lot more sympathetic than Robert Kelly._

_Jean and Hank may command the lab, Scott may command the field, but you command the interview._

_I sense a sales pitch coming._

A mental chuckle wasn't so different from a verbal one. _I was simply thinking that, with your mutation no longer a secret, other such situations might arise that call for some skill in verbal presentation and sales._

Warren snorted softly, which got a glance from Hank. _You want me for mutant PR._

_It's fully as critical as Scott's leather uniform - maybe more so._

_I'll keep it in mind. _Yet while Warren knew Xavier was trying to flatter him into the job, it was a job that needed to be done, and he was uniquely suited to it, just as Scott was suited to strategic leadership.

Before he could say anything further, though, he found himself face to face with Bobby Drake, who glanced from him to Hank and back. "Could I, um, talk to you both?"

"Sure," Warren replied, sharing a look with Hank. They let Bobby lead them off to a corner of the game room while the rest of the student body either headed out elsewhere, or stood in clumps, talking about the interview. "What is it?" Warren asked.

"That took a lot of guts," Bobby said. "Getting on national television, wings and all."

"Well, local television."

"It still took guts."

"Thank you. But it was inevitable, Bobby." He was flattered, but also wanted to be sure the boy understood reality. "Legacy didn't leave me with a lot of options. I could work this on my terms, or wind up a victim of the media. Any good businessman will tell you that you have to control the boardroom or it controls you. I gave Trish Tilby an interview that, if she's half as smart as I think she is, will make her career. She gave me the opportunity to present my mutation on my terms."

Bobby eyed him. "Last October, my parents found out I was a mutant by accident. Afterward, the professor made them forget, but . . . It didn't go well, that first telling. I've avoided telling them again, ever since." He paused and Warren just waited, letting him reach the obvious conclusion himself. "I think maybe I'd better decide when to tell them this time. Legacy almost made it inevitable, but I don't want it to be an accident again. It might not make any difference, but . . . ."

"It might make all the difference in the world," Warren finished, firmly.

"Will you go with me?" His glance took in Hank. "Both of you? Hank, you know more about mutations than anybody else except, well, Dr. Grey, but she's still in Hershey, and Warren, you're, um, yourself. They'd have to listen to you two."

Warren lacked the heart to tell the boy that his parents didn't have to listen to anyone, but Warren was more interested in Hank's reaction to the invitation. He looked caught between surprise and horror. "Bobby, taking me to see your parents won't help your case -"

"Why?"

That simple question shut Hank up thoroughly for a moment, then he said, "Due to my _appearance_."

"Hey - I've got wings, Monkey Toes," Warren reminded him.

"That's right -_ angel wings_. Not blue fur and an apish appearance," Hank snapped back.

"And a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Harvard, plus a medical degree from Columbia - neither of which I have, _Dr. _McCoy."

Hands in pockets, Scott had ambled over to join them. "He has a point, Hank. Whatever the point is."

Hank swung on him. "You stay out of this." Meanwhile, Scott and Warren shared a glance.

"I think" - Bobby broke in - "if my parents are going to listen at all, they're going to listen to people who know what they're talking about. That's you guys. That's why I wanted you to come. I mean, I understand if you don't have time. You're both a lot more important than I am, but if anybody can make them not freak out, it's you."

"Better than Logan, anyway," Scott added. "Or me. People skills don't rate high on my resume, and appearance isn't everything."

Bobby looked at his toes. "It's not about appearance anyway. Or not, you know, _that_ kind."

"I'll go," Warren told Bobby, then turned to stare at Hank, who wasn't looking at any of them.

"All right," Hank said finally. "But I still think it's a mistake."

* * *

Hank knew his behavior bitter, but found it hard to be phlegmatic. Scott had emerged from Legacy without his glasses, Warren had come out exposed as a mutant but still perceived sympathetically by the public. Xavier had feeling back in his legs, and Jean was returning from the dead.

But Hank was blue.

He should be glad for his friends, and was, but hadn't it been enough for him to live with outsized hands and feet and a hunched posture? Did he have to add blue fur and fangs to the mix?

Four weeks had passed since Warren's public interview, but business - and a sudden notoriety - had kept him occupied. Finally, he found a Sunday afternoon on which he and Hank could travel to Boston. Bobby, being enrolled at Boston University, would meet them there, and Warren's personal driver took them in the Bentley. Warren was enjoying this, Hank thought; it was all a very Warren thing to do, pulling out the stops to impress Bobby's family, and perhaps ease Bobby's ordeal in the process. Yet Hank felt railroaded. "They know we're coming?" he asked Warren again.

"Yes, they know."

"They know it's not just you?"

"Bobby told them we were both coming."

"The Winged Wonder and Tarzan the Ape Man."

"Stop it, Hank."

"Let me have my cynicism. It complements the new fangs."

"It's out of character."

"What? Only Scott's allowed to be caustic about his situation?"

Warren's lips thinned and he looked away, out the window. They made the rest of the trip in silence.

As soon as the car pulled up in the drive of a quaint, upper-middle-class house in the Boston suburbs, both Mr. and Mrs. Drake hurried out onto the front porch. Hank could tell from their expressions that Warren's ploy to impress had worked. Mrs. Drake practically salivated as Warren got out of the car. Hank remained inside. "Mr. Worthington!" Bobby's mother said, coming down the front steps to meet him. "We're _so_ honored. I couldn't believe it when Bobby said he'd invited some people from his school and named _you_."

"Thank you; please call me Warren," Warren said, his usual modest self. "I was flattered to be asked." He turned then, and Hank knew the moment was upon him. "This is Dr. Henry McCoy, CDC specialist in viral biochemistry."

Hank hesitated, then climbed out. For a moment, Bobby's mother gaped, but rapidly got control of herself and extended a hand. "I'm pleased to meet you, too, Dr. McCoy. Welcome to our home."

Startled by her politeness, Hank took the hand by instinct and shook politely. "Thank you," he said.

"Please, won't both of you come in?" And she led them inside, where Bobby and a younger brother waited. It was clear from the expression on the brother's face that he wasn't at all sure what to make of mutants in his home, but was too awed - at least by Warren - to be overtly rude. He frowned a lot, however.

Dinner was excruciating, it being clear that Bobby's parents entertained certain assumptions, but were waiting for confirmation. That didn't come until after dinner, when Bobby pushed aside his plate and stared at his glass of iced tea. "Um, Mom, Dad, Ronie - there's, uh, something I need to explain."

The next half-hour consisted of a lot of questions and answers, and Hank found himself - somewhat unexpectedly - at the center of it. By the time he and Warren left, Bobby's parents had as much information about mutation as Hank thought they were ready to hear and to his surprise, no one was yelling at anyone. In fact, Bobby's parents thanked both him and Warren for taking the time to come. Bobby followed them both out. "Thank you," he said fervently. "Thank you so much. This could have been a horrible disaster, but you two made all the difference."

"We were glad to help, Bobby," Hank said. Tell your parents to call me if they have further questions.

Bobby grinned and spontaneously gripped both Hank's outsized hands. "I owe you one, Big Blue. My mom likes you."

Hank blinked. "What?"

Bobby grinned. "She does. I know when she's impressed. She told me if you want to come back, she'll make you chicken and dumplings."

Hank found himself grinning in spite of himself. "I love chicken and dumplings."

* * *

"So give me the scoop." Betsy Braddock slid into the seat opposite Ororo's and dug into her breakfast grapefruit. "Who're friends around here, who can't bloody stand each other, and where's the nearest good pub?"

Ororo blinked. Since the older woman's arrival at the mansion two weeks ago, Ro had been trying to figure out if she really were as brazen as she seemed, or if she just enjoyed scandalizing adults and students alike. She certainly turned heads with her exotic looks and tall, leggy presence. "I do not think you could say that any of the adults are enemies," Ororo replied now. "Some are old friends, but there are no hidden battle lines. Among the students, however, less maturity reigns."

"Or maybe the students are just more honest," Betsy replied without looking up. "I get the impression ol' metal-claws is none too fond of our handsome, straight-laced headmaster."

Ororo grinned. "Logan and Scott would be bored if they could not take verbal swipes at each other, and once, yes, there was real tension there. Not now."

"Never hurts to ask," Betsy replied. "I'd prefer not to put my foot right in it as soon as I got here." She leaned over the table, giving a sense of confidentiality. "Tell me about your blue friend - Kurt. The two of you seem a bit chummy there."

Ororo blinked. "We do?"

Betsy eyed Ororo, and deadpanned, "You mean you're not?"

Ororo felt her ears go hot. "We are very good friends."

"Mmm," Betsy replied, grinning.

* * *

"Clarice, this is Artie Maddicks and Terry Roarke. You'll be rooming with Terry for now."

Dr. McCoy looked from the little, pink girl to Artie and Terry, who'd been appointed to escort her around and get her settled in. She was awfully young, Artie thought, and looked nervous. Leech had mentioned her before - how many pink girls with solid-green eyes could there be? - but Leech had always called her just 'Blink,' and Artie wondered how Dr. McCoy had found out her given name.

Now Dr. McCoy departed for his lab, and Artie looked to Terry to do the talking. He doubted Blink could read notes. Smiling, Terry took a step closer and held out a hand. "Hi, there. If you'll let us, we'll get you settled right in. Artie" - she indicated him - "was a friend of Leech's, so he'll be a big brother to ya."

Clarice-Blink looked from Terry to Artie. "You can't talk?" she asked him.

Artie showed her his tongue and her little mouth dropped open. "Cool! Is it like a frog's?"

"Snake," Terry said, grinning. "Artie can't talk because he doesn't have a voice box. If he did, he couldn't expand his throat to eat his dinner."

Clarice came forward to stare at Artie more closely. "I thought you was a passer."

Artie blinked in surprise, but maybe he should have anticipated that reaction. "Passer?" Terry asked.

"Someone who looks and acts like a norm, and don't want to be a mutant."

Artie and Terry exchanged another glance - more worried this time. Terry frowned, not as if she were angry, but as if she were thinking. "Clarice, around here, we don't divide people up that way. Some of us got more obvious mutations, some don't, but we're _all_ mutants. And we don't see non-mutants as the enemy." Artie nodded vigorously. He and Leech had debated this same point, and now he grabbed his pad to punch in something for Terry to read. _My mom - no mutant - loves me. McCoy's mom - no mutant - loves him, WORKS here._

Terry took the pad and read it to Clarice, who seemed confused - and dubious. "You'll get used to it," Terry told her, slipping an arm around her thin shoulders. "Come on now, let's show you to your room. Artie, grab her bag, will ye?"

On their way up the stairs, they passed Mr. Summers coming down. He was dressed for riding, and paused to smile at the new girl, who shrank back closer to Artie. "You must be Clarice?"

Clarice nodded, but said nothing. "We're glad to have you," Mr. Summers told her, then noticed she was staring at his Tony Lamas - cowboy boots not being normal footwear in the East. But Mr. Summers didn't ride English. "I'm going riding," he told her. "I have a horse. There are a lot of horses here, and many of the students ride. Do you like horses?"

"They're okay," Clarice answered. "Do you have zebras, too? Like in _Racing Stripes_? I like zebras better, but I ain't never seen a real one."

Mr. Summers's eyebrows went up. "You've never seen a zebra? I'm afraid we don't have any here, but there are zebras at the Bronx Zoo. I'll take you sometime, if you'd like to see one."

Clarice's face transformed into an expression of pure astonishment. "You'd take me to the zoo? Even looking like this? They said I couldn't never go out in public anywhere looking like this or the norms'd hurt me."

Jaw clenched, Mr. Summers' said, "We'll go to the zoo next Saturday, Clarice, and anybody who says anything about how you look has to answer to me."

* * *

"In peace let us pray to the Lord." _"Lord, have mercy._"

"For the peace from above and for the salvation of our souls, let us pray to the Lord." _"Lord, have mercy._"

"For the peace of the whole world, for the good estate of the holy churches of God, and for the union of all men, let us pray to the Lord." _"Lord, have mercy."_

Kitty watched Mrs. Rasputin and Piotr closely so she knew when to do what. There was a lot of up and down, bowing and crossing, but she politely refrained from crossing herself, being Jewish. No one said anything, or even seemed to notice. There was a rhythm to the service, Kitty thought; these were actions these people had performed thousands of times. She rather liked that, the sense of history. She didn't like so much that they spent most of their time on their feet. Why'd they have pews if they didn't seem to use them? They would, Pete had said, for the homily. "Ours are shorter than protestant sermons, even if the service is half an hour longer."

He wasn't trying to convert her. She viewed her visit as an exercise in cultural exchange. When he'd invited her, he'd said, "I thought you might like to see what my dad does. And, if it's okay - I mean, if it's allowed - I wouldn't mind going to a synagogue service. I've never been in a synagogue before."

So here she was on Sunday morning in Piotr's father's church, standing in a pew, trying to make sense of an ancient ceremony. At least they were doing it in English, not Russian. "This is the OCA," he'd reminded her. "The Orthodox Church _in America_. We do everything in English." Even if, from what Kitty could tell, 90% of the congregation was Russian. She'd heard more Russian before the service than during it. Her own attempts at a few phrases had been smiled at with amused tolerance and gently corrected. They were polite here, even if they kept calling her "Piotr's girl," and Pete didn't correct them. It gave her a little thrill.

Now, he bent to say, "We can sit." And all around, people settled into pews as Father Rasputin came forward, decked out in his fancy robes of green and white, a great crucifix on his chest.

"A long time ago," he said, "a Presbyterian friend told me a story I have never forgotten. Once, a man went into a diner in Georgia for breakfast. The man ordered bacon, eggs, and toast. When the plate came, there was the bacon and the eggs and the toast, and also this 'white stuff.' The man asked the waitress, 'What is this? I didn't order this." The waitress replied, 'Them's grits.' 'But I did not order grits,' the man said, and she answered, 'You don't order grits. They just come.' Grace is like that. We do not order grace, it just comes. The reading for today . . . ."

Kitty had to smile at the story and leaned up against the comfortable solidity of Pete beside her. In a soft voice, she said, "Your dad likes to tell stories, doesn't he?"

"It's a priest thing," he replied. "At least this one wasn't about me. One of the pitfalls of being the priest's son is that everybody in the congregation knows every stupid thing you did as a child."

She laughed softly, and hoped that, eventually, she'd get to hear some of those stories - although preferably at the dinner table. She could probably handle the church thing every once in a while, but didn't want to make a habit of it.

* * *

"So the semester's going okay then?" Logan asked as he and Rogue ambled across the leaf-strewn lawn of Cornell. She clung to his arm with her usual affection, a fall breeze lifting her hair.

"It's going fine. Most of my classes are pretty easy -" The sound of her cell phone interrupted and she pulled it free to answer. "Hello?" There was a pause, then Logan saw her give a dimpled grin and her whole manner altered subtly. "Let me call you back later, 'kay? I've got a visitor." Pause. "Yes, it's _guy_." Pause. "Wouldn't you like to know?" And she hung up.

"Who was that?" Unless Logan missed his guess, the speaker on the other end was male and someone Rogue was interested in.

"Oh, just Remy," she replied.

Logan almost choked. "Remy? You mean the cocky, pretty-boy swamp rat Storm's team brought back from Essex's lab?"

Rogue laughed. "He's not a swamp rat."

"How often he call you?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. Once a day? Why does it matter?"

Once a _day_? And Logan had worried about the ice boy. "You be careful with him, darlin'. He ain't Bobby."

"I know," she replied, and that dimpled grin was back. She still hung on his arm and it occurred to Logan to worry that her old crush on him had given her a taste for the quick and dangerous - and didn't like that thought.

"Tell me what classes you're taking."

"English comp, an astronomy lab, speech communications, and, um, Japanese history."

Both Logan's eyebrows climbed. "Japanese history? That doesn't sound like a freshman course."

"It's not, but I got special permission from the professor." She shrugged. "When you healed me from Legacy, I got some of those memories." She was silent for several steps, then said, "I don't have to declare a major yet, but I've been thinking about history. Between you and Erik, I know a lot about World War II. I'd like to know more." She glanced up at him. "If I get stuck in class, can I call you?"

He patted her gloved hand. "You know you can."

"Thanks, Logan."

* * *

Jean returned to the mansion (again) about five weeks after she'd cured Legacy. It was as quiet an advent as they could manage. When the_ Lower Hudson Journal_ wanted to do a story on the woman who'd been missing for a year, Jean politely declined. "I just want to get back to my life," she said. While she believed she'd covered all her bases and there was no evidence of obvious benefit from her disappearance to arouse others' suspicion, the fewer questions asked, the better.

Back home, she and Scott went right up to their room and locked the door. Half an hour later, sprawled sweating with legs entwined under the thermal blanket, she slid fingers along his bare skin. "You wore a condom."

He was silent a moment, just breathing in rhythm with her. Finally, he said, "I know we talked about starting a family."

"We did."

"I'm not -"

"You've changed your mind."

"Not really. I've just rethought how I want to acquire that family." His voice was soft and even; she couldn't answer for the lump gathering in her throat. "Essex is still out there. What if we had a child and he . . . got hold of it?"

But Jean knew that was only part of his concern; propping herself up on an elbow, she found her voice. "And what if we had a child who really could do everything he predicted?" Shaking back her hair, she met his eyes. "That's what worries you, isn't it?"

He was silent again a while. "I walked through time, Jean. Well, another me did." He met her eyes. "I'm never going to use that power again."

"Scott -"

"I'm not. I've thought about it. It's like your TK. The lure . . . I think of what I could change . . . ." He trailed off. "It scares me, that ability. I don't want to give it to a child. And if our son or daughter had your TK and telepathy, and my ability to walk through time - my God. It's too much . . . just too much power for any one person."

He ran a finger from her hairline down past her ear to her jaw. "I want a vasectomy."

Those words - four little words - knocked the breath right out of her and she felt the prick of tears. He was still speaking. "I wouldn't get one without talking to you first, but I don't want kids, Jean - not natural kids, ones Essex could take. That new girl - Clarice. Hank thinks she's about six, maybe seven. She lost the only family she ever knew to Legacy, then she was stuck in hospital isolation for three weeks after she recovered. I've watched her since she arrived; she hides in corners and stays quiet, like I did - tries to be good, probably afraid we'll throw her out if she's not. I understand that. I've been eating with her at dinner, and we watch Animal Planet in the den after. She likes zebras."

"You want to adopt her," Jean managed to get out.

"Maybe. It got me thinking. Why father a child when there are so many already who need a mom and dad? I know that better than most."

"You feel . . . beholden."

He shook his head. "It's not guilt, not really. I just understand."

Sighing, Jean flopped onto her back, hands behind her head. She, too, had been mulling over what Essex had told her about any children she might bear Scott. But she'd also been dreaming of late about carrying a child in her own body, under her sternum and heart, a child that she and Scott had made, for love. She'd been so happy when he'd finally seemed ready. Yet now -

Would it be so different, a child they'd chosen? Couldn't she love an adopted child as much as one she'd borne? Scott was right. There were children out there like him, children who needed a home. Some of them were even mutants. "I -" Her voice cracked. "All right. I understand, I do." She pulled her hands down and rolled back onto her side. "Just - let's stay with the birth control for a while yet, okay?"

He was watching her, and now reached out to cup her cheek. "I know you wanted a baby. I'm sorry."

"I understand, and even think you're right. I guess . . . I'm just not ready to give it up completely yet. Give me some time."

He nodded. "Fair enough." Then he grinned. "I still have almost a full box of condoms, anyway." He scooted down under the sheets again. "'_Ribbed for her pleasure._'"

She laughed at him.

* * *

"So, what happened with the White King campaign?"

"They elected me."

"They elected you!" Scott turned at the yacht's rail to look at Warren. "I thought you said it'd be a lost cause now?"

"That was before Sebastian Shaw and half the court got arrested. There are a lot of open positions these days." Warren smiled slightly as he loosened one of the sails to catch the north wind. "Filling one of the king seats was important, and I guess they figure I'm not a social embarrassment after all."

They'd taken a day to go boating on the bay, just the three of them. Scott and Warren were on the deck while Jean took a late afternoon nap below. It was unusually warm for early October, but still chilly on the water; soon, it would be both too cold and too rough to go out. The line of Manhattan's skyscrapers rose off their bow, with the Statue of Liberty in the distance. Warren tied up the sail again and came to stand beside Scott, forearms resting on the railing. They were quiet a long while, and Warren felt no need to speak. He just enjoyed the moment. Two months ago, he'd never have expected to be here.

Eventually, Scott said, "I called Colleen yesterday to tell her Jean's back."

"How'd she take it?"

"Well enough, considering."

"How much does she know?" Warren asked. Although he didn't talk to Colleen Wing as often as Scott did, they still had some contact. He needed to know what not to say.

"Only the public version; it was all she knew to begin with."

"And she bought it?"

Scott snorted and turned so that his hip was up against the side of the boat. "In this case, the lie's more believable than the truth, don't you think?"

Warren shrugged. "If she gets jealous enough -"

"She's not jealous, not like that. She knew I wasn't available now anymore than ten years ago."

His back to the boat's side, elbows resting on the rail, Warren laughed at Scott. "You underestimate your own appeal, Gamma Gaze. You always have. You're quite the heart-breaker."

Frowning, Scott took off his ball cap and ran a hand through his hair, then put it back on. "I don't want to be - mean to be."

"I know. Mostly, I'm teasing. Mostly. Colleen will get over you again. She was coming out of a bad break-up herself, so it's not like she was sitting around pining for you since college."

Unlike himself.

As if reading his mind, Scott eyed him. "So how jealous are you?"

Warren looked away. "Like I said before - I'd rather have Jean alive than dead, for God's sake. She's as much my best friend as you are."

Scott leaned in to run a hand over Warren's wing, smoothing the feathers ruffled by wind. His palm was warm, and he was closer than Warren found comfortable. After a moment, he spoke, but without looking at Warren's face. "After whatever happened out there on the lake - that . . . fusing - you know what you mean to me, and to her. Jean was right. We were never two plus one. We've always been three."

"I know. That's why I'm not really jealous."

"Liar," Scott said, grinning slightly.

"The only thing I'm jealous of is something I accepted a long time ago wasn't going to happen. Quit bringing it up unless you mean to rub salt in the wound."

Scott turned his head to look at him finally. "I don't mean that at all. But I've been thinking a lot lately. Losing Jean - then losing you, or thinking I was going to -" Whatever he was going to say, though, he never got it out. He stopped talking and Warren found himself staring into the bright reflection of the setting sun in those impossibly blue irises. He'd forgotten the shock of them until he'd seen them again after over a decade, and maybe half of why he'd been able to get past his crush before was because the glasses had hidden those eyes.

Abruptly, Scott bent forward to kiss him.

It was that simple, in the end. No fanfare or pledges or apologies. He just kissed him, and Warren held very still, afraid to move, gut seizing, sure he was dreaming this . . . all the clichés that went with a first kiss. It was more gentle than passionate, all soft lips and mouth half open, no tongue except a hint. After ten heartbeats (loud in Warren's chest), Scott grew a bit rougher and that was definitely a tongue there, teasing the corner of Warren's mouth and upper lip. Scott had reached up to cup the back of his head and Warren gripped his shoulders to hold him still. The kiss lasted a full minute before Warren pulled back. He was sure he'd see either fear or horror on Scott's face, but found neither.

"What the hell was that?" Warren asked, and Scott laughed, as if nervous.

"Kiss? Lip-lock? Tonsil-hockey? Well, not quite the latter - "

"Shut up." Warren was getting angry but didn't let Scott go, just held him more firmly. "I mean _what the fuck was that about?_"

Scott's eyes slid sideways. "I've been afraid, and I was tired of being afraid."

"Afraid of what? Being less of a man for wanting a man?"

"Maybe," Scott answered truthfully. "Intellectually I know better, but the old feelings are harder to overcome.

Warren let him go, sneering, "So you convinced yourself you're straight. Now you want to walk on the wild side."

"I _am_ straight." Scott's face was serious. "But this isn't about labels, War. You're the only guy I've ever thought about kissing because I wanted to, and maybe that's why I was afraid to. All the others, I didn't want to; I just didn't have a choice. I guess -" He frowned. "It's hard to explain. Every time I thought about actually kissing you, I'd get - images. From before. It was like ice water being dumped right down my back, or in my lap. I couldn't get past it. You'd think I could. I mean, I knew you weren't them, but it's not something a person can just wipe away. It's there. All the time. It steals up and ambushes you no matter how sick you are of feeling that way."

Still skeptical, Warren asked, "So what was different this time?"

"Nothing." Scott turned away so that he was leaning against the rail again, looking out at the bay. They were passing the Statue of Liberty and Warren could see her outline just beyond Scott, who glanced back, explaining, "I just decided to ignore it this time. I wasn't going to let my past control me. And after a minute, the images went away. It was you, not them." He turned his face back to the water and the Statue, and the wind snatched his next words so that Warren had to listen hard to hear him. "I don't feel for you what I feel for Jean. It's not the same attraction. I'm really not turned on by men - but I am by you. I don't know why, but it's been there a long time. I just couldn't face it till now." He laughed a little. "Jean's not the only one who's changed. And that's about the best explanation I can give you."

"This isn't some kind of . . . pity thing?"

"Shit." Now Scott was angry, and stalked off across the deck. "No!" he bellowed.

Warren went after him, halted right behind. "I had to ask."

"If I did it for pity, it wouldn't be pity, it'd be cruel."

Taking a final step forward so that the front of his body was pressed to the back of Scott's, he slid one arm around Scott's chest and the other around his belly, wings out to brace them against the wind, his face buried in Scott's neck. "One last question," he said against the skin.

"All right."

"Did Jean suggest this to you?"

"Jean's been after me about this for years, but today? No. I didn't even know I was going to do it until I did. As far as I know, Jean's still asleep below." A breath pause, then, "Yes, she's still asleep. I can feel her. This is about you and me."

Lifting his face, wind blowing his hair from behind, Warren scanned the horizon. They had his small yacht today, a personal boat less recognizable, and as near as he could tell, there were no others nearby, or none close enough for even a telephoto lens to make out much. Paparazzi were always an issue in his life, especially since his interview with Trish. But relatively sure they weren't being spied on, he turned Scott so they were face to face again and pulled off that ridiculous ball cap. Then he kissed him, less gentle and with a lot more tongue, and maybe they should talk more about this but he just wasn't interested in talking at the moment, and he didn't think Scott was either. That was an erection pressing against his through chinos and if he'd feared Scott wasn't entirely committed to this, he stopped thinking so at that point. Still, Warren wondered how far this would go. Kissing with clothes on was one thing. Getting the clothes off and doing anything else was another matter entirely - not to mention Jean was down below.

_Actually, Jean is up above, _came a soft voice in his mind. _I felt you both; it woke me._

And despite the fact she'd been downright pushy in suggesting that Warren become more than just their friend, he jumped back now like a guilty schoolboy. Scott looked startled, too.

She laughed and came over to them, gripping each by the arm and looking from one to the other. Abruptly she pulled Scott's head down to kiss him herself, hard on the mouth. Letting him go, she repeated the gesture with Warren, then simply looked from one to the other until, almost hesitantly, Scott leaned in to kiss Warren while she watched. "This is weird," Warren muttered when he pulled away.

Jean was tugging them both backwards. "Come on. Let's get off the deck."

That, at least, was a good idea - nonetheless, "I have to park the boat," Warren said, "unless you want us to drift into something."

So he and Scott took down the sails and motored out of the main traffic ways where they could drop anchor. Then both men followed Jean below into the main cabin where the kitchen and minibar were, along with a TV and couches. But she moved through towards the bedroom, removing her sweater as she went to reveal a lacy white bra.

The sleeping cabin itself was small, with room for little besides the big bed. By the time the two men got through the door, Jean had her jeans off as well, and was keeling on the sheets, smiling. _Shut the door,_ she sent. It was warmer here, and there were no windows.

Warren did as she said while she crawled over to where Scott stood at the bed edge. Unbuttoning his shirt, she kissed his neck, and Warren wondered if this wasn't all a little fast, even as he had to admit the sight of them together had pushed his own arousal from mere interest to damn insistent. Maybe once they'd made the decision, not a lot remained to go slow about, but Warren still worried that Scott would regret this as soon as the body rush cooled. Now, though, his eyes were closed as he let her nibble the skin of his jaw, and his own hands stroked her back and arms, then came around to cup her breasts inside her bra. His expression was relaxed; he didn't look like a man unsure of himself.

Warren moved up behind him, letting his own hands flatten against Scott's belly as he licked at Scott's ear opposite from where Jean worked on his chin. Almost involuntarily, Scott bucked his ass up against Warren's crotch, rubbing, and one of Warren's hands dropped to the front of Scott's own jeans, rubbing back. "Unh," Scott grunted, panting hard. Warren started unbuttoning Scott's fly, getting a hand inside his underwear to stroke his erection up and down.

Jean was tugging Scott up on the bed, while Warren peeled him out of the jeans, leaving them in a pool on the cabin floor, Warren's own shirt and pants with them. And there, once they were on the bed in their underwear, the predictable happened. Scott froze up. His arousal deflated and he started to hyperventilate, crabwalking away from them until he was backed into a corner where the bed came down from the cabin wall, knees drawn up and arms wrapped around them, eyes on the rucked up bed sheets. "Sorry, sorry, sorry," he kept muttering over and over.

"It's okay," Jean was saying, hand out toward him in a calming gesture.

"I thought I was ready," Scott said, "I thought I could do this. I'm sorry." He sounded close to tears. "I am so goddamn _fucked up_."

"No, you're not," Warren said, trying to sound calm. "This is a little kinky and out there for me, too, okay?" He glanced at Jean. "Maybe we should go a little slower. Or a lot slower."

Scott looked up, his posture having relaxed fractionally. "It is and isn't out there. For a minute, it felt like the most real thing in the world - the way it ought to be. Then I started _thinking_ about it, and I couldn't breathe."

Jean stretched out and scooted under the covers, patting the spot beside her. "Come lay down. Let's just snuggle, the three of us. We've done that enough, it's not something new."

It took a minute for Scott to be ready, but then he left the corner and crawled across the blankets to slip in beside her. As one, they turned to look at Warren, who joined them on Scott's other side.

And there they lay while the sun set outside. At first, a heavy sense of anticipation weighted them down, like the covers, but gradually, as the cabin grew dark, that eased. There was just the sound of the waves lapping the boat side. Warren's arm, draped over Scott, rose and fell with Scott's breathing and his fingers brushed the skin of Jean's shoulder. He could feel her own arm move occasionally as she rubbed Scott's side. One of Warren's wings lay over all of them.

It began slowly, and with Scott. Turning on his side, he started caressing Jean; Warren couldn't see, only hear the sound of her breath catching as he touched sensitive flesh. Then Scott's other hand found Warren's, shifting it from his chest to his hip. It was acquiescence, and Warren spooned up tightly against him.

For a long time, they explored there in the dark, and Warren wasn't always sure which one of them was touching him, or which he touched, though Jean's skin was softer, and Scott's hands on him were more awkward. Yet if he felt worked up, he no longer worried that they were rushing headlong into something. Moving aside the blankets, he kissed his way down Scott's body to his groin area, licked Scott's balls, then took his cock in his mouth. Shuddering, Scott arched up and ran fingers through Warren's hair. Warren moved up and down, then swallowed and Scott cried out, ejaculating. Warren just stroked his skin until their hearts stopped racing, then he climbed Scott's body until they were nose to nose in the dark, Warren on top to free his wings. Jean lay quiet beside them. "You okay?" Warren asked, the first real words spoken in over an hour.

"I'm not going to freak out again, if that's what you're afraid of," Scott replied. "I've had my freak-out session for the day." He sounded somewhere between amused and embarrassed and Warren slid sideways off him, letting Jean straddle his hips. Now it was Warren's turn to watch, or rather listen. He could hear the wet sound of Scott licking skin and Jean's moans. Turned on more than he'd expected, he felt his way until he got hold of Jean to kiss her mouth and tweak her nipple. Scott suckled at the other and used his hand on her, his arm making rhythmic thrusts. Abruptly, Warren found himself a part of their mental bond. He could _feel _the deep-body arousal of a woman, more diffused but powerful as she tore her mouth free and arched her back, coming down hard on Scott's hand, hurtling towards her own orgasm. Her own hand fumbled for Warren's erection and she pumped it even as she came, hissing, her body clenching. Scott let her go and quickly pulled Warren on top again, rubbing his fingers, soaked from Jean, all over Warren's cock, then pushing it between his thighs. Almost mindless with need, Warren thrust fast until he came, pushing down and crying out, wings extended until they slapped against the walls of the cabin. Then he collapsed, boneless, on Scott, wings still spread over all three of them, and despite the chill of a fall night, the cabin was hot, smelling of sex and sea salt. None of them said anything, even telepathically. They dozed, rocked by the waves of the bay.

Warren woke around midnight, or that's what the illuminated face of his watch said. It was the only thing he still wore. Beside him, Scott breathed heavily, almost a snore, and he could feel Jean beyond, stirring under his feathers. For a while he lay there, just thinking. Everything had changed, and yet hadn't changed at all, and he almost laughed at the complete unoriginality of the thought. But it was true.

He also realized that as natural as this had felt, it had to be a one-time thing. As he'd told Jean earlier that summer, all three of them lived lives far too public to risk exposure. He doubted even the mansion residents would understand this, except perhaps Xavier. And while none of the adults would give them away, secrets of this type had a way of coming out.

Abruptly, he realized Jean was awake. How he sensed the difference, he wasn't sure, but he felt the gentle touch of her mind. She might no longer have TK, but she retained a powerful telepath. _You're angsting,_ she sent.

_You know it can't work, not permanently, _he sent back. _Maybe in a perfect world, but not here._

She was silent mentally for a long while. _I know, _she said finally. _But I think it needed to happen once._

_Once,_ Warren agreed.

"Cut the melodrama and 'only time ever' crap," Scott said from between them, making them both jump. The bed rocked and sheets rustled as he sat up. "You both know damn well we'll end up here together again."

Warren blinked, and felt more than heard Jean's mental dissent.

"Yes, we will," Scott replied, "it just won't happen often. We can't afford it to. I know perfectly well we don't live in Neverland, but I'm also damn tired of giving up what I want just because society doesn't understand. My entire life has been about doing what other people expected or wanted of me. Not this time. It took me almost fifteen years to get to this place. I'm not going back to emotional limping."

"They'll crucify us," Warren told him.

"They have to catch us first," Scott replied, and Warren could hear his smile. "Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor." He laid back down. "People make their own peculiar arrangements all the time. This is ours.

"Now let's go back to sleep. Jean and I don't have to be back at the mansion until tomorrow, and I promised Alex I'd call him before his afternoon gig."

* * *

There is ever, only one phoenix.

Except when she refuses to rise.

The phoenix must live without mother or father, without kith or kin, without mate. She is alone. And that was beyond bearing.

In choosing mortality, she chose companionship, and love. And it's only love that can kill a phoenix.

In the acceptance of death, she found her true rebirth - and her salvation. In the acceptance of death, she found her own grail.

* * *

**NOTES**: Any novel should be able to stand on its own, and many readers are interested in the _story_, not what's going on in the author's head. But if you're curious about my interest in The Phoenix Saga, or about the various mythological elements of the Grail Legend (where they come from, what they mean, and why/how I've used them), the authorial notes following might offer some insight. It's akin to a (much shorter!) director's commentary.

Thank you in advance for any comments and feedback. I rarely check ff-net these days, but I DO still receive comments and appreciate them.


	43. Endnotes to the novel

**Authorial Endnotes to **_**Grail**_

Writing _Grail _has given me the chance to take on one of my most favorite plotlines in X-Men ever. I'm hardly alone in my fascination. The (Dark) Phoenix Saga seems to make regular appearances in almost any version of X-Men from the "616" (original) universe, to later cartoons, to the _Ultimate_ line, to, now, the films. It's almost as immortal as its subject.

The comics original had all kinds of crazy stuff. Adventures on the moon, space shuttles, space aliens, a telepathic lecher, a disco diva - et al. - and of course, a planet-eating cosmic entity. It was, at times . . . well - _silly_. One has to take it all with a grain of salt. Beyond the silliness, the basic theme of the Phoenix Saga still stands as a tribute to why X-Men has been popular for over half a century. In _Grail,_ I was able to do the Phoenix Saga as _I'd_ want to tell it. Phoenix is Jean, plain and simple, not a demi-goddess clone of Jean, an alternate personality, or anything else. The "Dark Phoenix" is that part inside all of us that must negotiate the boundaries between right and wrong. As Kurt told Warren near the story's beginning, one interpretation of the Garden of Eden story tells that Adam and Eve fell not because they wanted to be bad, but because they wanted to be _good_. I find that far more interesting. (Wildly cackling evil geniuses have just never done it for me.) Jean's struggle in _Grail_ is the same one faced by any person in a position of power who takes that responsibility seriously. Where are the lines in the sand? And how much harder to judge when the power is so great?

Jean's choice at the end reflects a theme I've tried to address throughout the novel. Extreme choices may be dramatic, but aren't necessarily mature. As far as I'm aware, in all the various takes on the Phoenix Saga, it's never ended in quite the way it does here. Even Chris Claremont's intended original ending - which had a depowered Jean, not a dead one - had the change done TO her, not by her, and she was depowered completely . . . made fully human.

This leads us to the book's real mystery - not who's haunting the mansion (that's fairly obvious, fairly quickly). The real mystery is why Jean left the plane in the first place - and of course, the reader had the answer (more or less) from Chapter One. She committed suicide, or tried. Scott just wasn't (entirely) right as to _why_. Yet her sacrifice wasn't noble. It was extreme, an immature choice. Just as Jean choosing, at the end, to become a demi-goddess beyond humanity would also have been a tempting, dramatic - but _extreme_ - choice. A more mature Jean, at that point, chose something else. She came back because she had a responsibility to Scott. (And yes, that's a different choice from the one she made in _Climb the Wind,_ but that was a different situation - and different Scott, as well.)

Eschewing the extreme is found even in the conclusion of the trio storyline. Jean and Warren are inclined to make a (melo)dramatic "one time only" decision that would sound noble, but would (probably) prove impossible to keep. Scott tells them the truth - they'll all end up in bed together again, and may as well acknowledge its inevitability rather than feel guilty when it occurs. Yet he also doesn't attempt (as Phoenix did) to deny the obvious social approbation they might face. So while they'll end up there again, it just won't happen very often - and doesn't really need to.

And I found, after writing this, that a number of readers wanted to know if Jean ever would get her baby, and if it'd be Scott's. The answer it, she will get a baby, but it'll be Warren's, although acknowledged by Scott, and will go on to inherit Worthington Enterprises. Meanwhile, she and Scott will adopt a number of mutant children, including Clarice. In this universe, there will be no Nate or Rachel. It's just too dangerous.

* * *

Now, the mythological aspects . . . The Matter of Britain and the Grail Legend are probably better thought of as a matrix of various mythological threads - a web - than a linear progression. It's very hard, now, to be sure what influenced what, and in what order. Some paths of progression are obvious, others not so much so. All that said, let me state that I'm _no_ expert on this mythology, though it's long fascinated me, and I think what fascinates me most is the intersection of Pagan, Jewish, and Christian symbology.

Quickly, and for the curious in-the-know, the texts on which I've primarily relied for imagery (though not _in toto_) are Chrétien de Troyes' _Percival_, mentioned by Xavier at one point, and Wolfram von Eschenbach's _Parzival_. In these earlier texts, it is Percival who functions as the narrator and primary Grail Knight, not Galahad, who is better known via Mallory and Tennyson - or Mary Stewart and Marion Zimmer Bradley. And - we must not forget - Monty Python.

The (wounded) Fisher King is not Arthur, although sometimes they're conflated. The Fisher King is Amfortas, and his brother is the hermit Trevrezent. They lead the Templars, who guard the Grail, and it is a conversation with Trevrezent that grants Percival understanding that he's the one who can (via the Grail) heal the wounded and agonized Amfortas. Likewise, it is Xavier who guides the trio, without necessarily being part of it. (And yes, Logan also functions somewhat in that capacity.)

The nature of the Fisher King's wound is initially aspecific, although it's later linked to the lance that pierced the side of Christ. But really, the character is an amalgam, which is part of why his nature and function are extremely hard to figure out in the mythology. He's many things at once, and none of them adequately. This struck me as appropriate to Scott, who tries to be Scott, Cyclops, teacher, field leader, 'husband,' son, friend . . . he can't make up his mind. His own wounding contributes to his need to please, and thus, until he's healed, he limps along in all his roles. As he says in his final diary entry, he does things because "someone has to." It's only at the very end that he begins to take tentative steps towards defining himself in his _own_ terms. Like Jean, he's finally growing up.

It is Warren (Percival) who unites Jean and Scott (both earlier in the semi-prequel _Special_, and again in _Grail_) - and for that act, he is, in truth, the angel/saint who guards the Grail, which isn't power or magic, at all, but selfless love. His mutation makes a lovely symbol for _Grail's_ Percival.

So just what is the specific connection between the Phoenix and the Grail?

Perhaps most obviously, amazing, magical powers of healing are attributed to both mythic figures. Both could bring back the wounded even from the edge of death. Although the Grail is probably best known as the cup used at the Last Supper, as well as the one in which Joseph of Arimathea caught the blood of the crucified Christ, that is almost certainly a later imposition. Originally, it was a platter, and may reference the Cauldron of Cerdiwen. By the Late Middle Ages, both the (Oriental) Phoenix legend and the (Occidental) Grail legend were Christological symbols of both resurrection and redemption.

Yet what particularly interested me is that, in Wolfram, the grail either was or contained the stone _lapis exilis_. This special blue stone was the very one from which the Phoenix kindled its death flame. Scott's eyes, of course, are blue.

And if Scott is healed by the Grail (Jean), he is also the one for whom Jean chooses (ultimate) death - to give up the power of resurrection and immortality in favor of companionship and love, the greatest healing powers of all.

* * *

**Acknowledgements:** As always, my novels are never just my own work. Quite a number of other people contribute to the final product, and deserve to be thanks for that. Please remember that Naomi Kraus has been a part of this book from the beginning, faithfully editing it, and ridesandruns has also offered some pinch-hit edits and assistance on Trish/TV reporting.

Last, Leslie. Without Leslie, this novel simply couldn't have been written. It's not every author who's lucky enough to have a virologist in her hip pocket, advising and keeping her from making all manner of stupid errors. I hope she's had as much fun playing mad scientist coming up with Legacy as I had writing it. But seriously, the medical material owes entirely to her instruction. I've wanted to take on Legacy for a long time, but didn't want to make hash of it. Leslie kept me from doing that.

* * *

Thanks for joining me on the ride. This was the last novel I wrote for X-Men, and I feel it let me go out with a bang. :-)


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